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TRUE STORIES OF GREAT AMERICANS 



SAM HOUSTON 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




After a daguerreotype by B. P. Paige. 

Sam Houston 



SAM HOUSTON 



BY 

GEORGE S. BRYAN 



" By San Jacinto's placid stream 

The warriors heard and, shining far, 
They saw the splendid morning gleam 

Of one imperial, changeless star ; 
They followed where its gleaming led : 

To Hope, to Peace, to Victory, 
For from beneath her martyr dead, 
Behold, a nation rose up free ! " 

— M. E. M. Davis. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1921 

All rights reserved 



Copyright, 191 7, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1917. 



3 3 0l°l3 

2 A 



J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



Curiously enough, to Americans outside of 
Texas, Sam Houston is rather vague and uncon- 
vincing. He has been grouped with Carson and 
Custer, with Boone and Crockett; but to the 
general reader Sam Houston is probably less 
familiar than any of them. 

Yet Houston was a notable personality. His 
life was full of adventure and romantic incident. 
He came to be the outstanding figure in a highly 
important phase of American history. He smacked 
of our soil and was peculiarly typical of times and 
conditions long passed but still of real interest. 

I have sought to give a vital picture of Houston 
himself and to set forth as fully as necessary the 
events in Texas in which he played so weighty a 
part. I may here acknowledge my general in- 
debtedness to the labors of Garrison, Smith, and 
others. For myself, the more I have studied 
Houston, the more I have admired him. If such 
be not the experience of my readers, the fault, I 
fear, is mine. 

G. S. B. 

v 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGB 

A Frontier Lad I 

CHAPTER II 

Serving with "Old Hickory" io 

CHAPTER III 
Early Public Life ....... 20 

CHAPTER IV 
Living with Indians 41 

CHAPTER V 

An Excursion into History 52 

CHAPTER VI 

A Fresh Enterprise 63 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 
CHAPTER VII 



Texas and the Texans 72 

CHAPTER VIII 
Beginnings of Revolt 85 

CHAPTER IX 
Sam Houston as Leader ...... 95 

CHAPTER X 

Confused Councils .112 

CHAPTER XI 
A Famous Retreat 122 

CHAPTER XII 
At San Jacinto . 138 

CHAPTER XIII 
An Important Capture 148 



CONTENTS ix 
CHAPTER XIV 

PAGE 

President of Texas 154 

CHAPTER XV 
Houston, the Man . . . . , . .176 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of Sam Houston . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Statue of Houston in Statuary Hall. . . 52 
Statue of Austin in Statuary Hall ... 90 

The Site of Vince's Bridge 144 

The Spot Where Santa Anna Was Captured . 150 
Sam Houston's Old House in Houston, Texas . 176 



SAM HOUSTON 



CHAPTER I 
A Frontier Lad 

The fine old State of Virginia has been called 
"the Mother of Presidents." and almost any 
school child can tell why. Few of us, though, 
happen to remember that Virginia was the mother 
of an active little backwoods boy who became presi- 
dent, not of the United States, but of a sister 
republic; for Texas was once an independent 
country, just as much as Switzerland or France, 
and from Virginia came its first president. 

The name of the backwoods boy was Sam Hous- 
ton — for though he was probably christened 
Samuel, he abandoned that form — and he was 
born on March 2, 1793, in a back section of the 
State, in a little spot known as Timber Ridge 
Church, about seven miles east of the old town of 
Lexington. Timber Ridge Church wasn't even 
a village ; it was just a house or two at a cross- 
roads. If it had not been for Sam, we should 



1 



2 



SAM HOUSTON 



never have heard of it. The correct pronuncia- 
tion of Houston, by the way, is as if it were spelled 
Alston. 

Probably when you think of Virginia as it was 
then, you think of great, stately houses, and beauti- 
ful gardens, and elegant men and women who 
could give much time to all the fine graces of life 
because they had many negro slaves to do all the 
work for them. You think of rich furniture, and 
four-horse coaches; brocaded clothes, and won- 
derful balls by candlelight. This is all very pretty 
and romantic; but we know that Sam Houston 
was not born into a world like that. Those things 
were true of eastern Virginia, along the coast and 
by some of the rivers like the James. But Sam's 
earliest years were passed in a section of Virginia 
where hard-working farmers were trying in a 
rough way to make homes for themselves. 

These people had no slaves — they did their 
own work, and they had plenty of work to do. 
They had to cut down the forest trees, to dig out 
and burn the stumps, to till rocky land that had 
never known a plow. Their houses were log cabins, 
their furniture was generally homemade and 
clumsy. When they traveled they went on horse- 
back or on foot. Their clothing was homespun, 



A FRONTIER LAD 



3 



and the nearest thing they ever had to a ball was 
a rude " country dance" on the unevenest kind of 
a floor. It was a frontier community that Sam 
came into — just the sort that so many famous 
Americans have known as boys. But Sam thrived 
in those surroundings. In fact, he shot up to 
"six feet three" before he stopped growing, with 
a straight, strong figure and plenty of endurance. 

His father — whose name was Samuel — didn't 
do so much at farming as most of the neighbors 
did, because he had served as a rifleman in General 
Daniel Morgan's brigade during the Revolutionary 
War, and the glamour of a soldier's life kept him 
in service after the war was over. He came to 
be a major and was assistant inspector-general of 
frontier troops. This means that he had to be 
away from home a great deal, seeing that the forces 
under his care were in proper shape. He died 
"in the harness" in 1806, while on a military tour 
through the Alleghanies. He was a courageous 
Scotch-Irishman and a good soldier. 

Sam's mother had been a Miss Elizabeth Paxton. 
She had a strong character and a kind heart. 
The neighbors liked her for the many good turns 
she did them. After her husband died she decided 
to quit Virginia for the new settlements in Ten- 



4 SAM HOUSTON 

nessee. It wasn't an easy trip across the moun- 
tains, but somehow she reached her destination, 
and in Blount County, about eight miles east of 
the Tennessee River, another cabin was built and 
Sam had a second home. This was a wild country 
indeed — far wilder than Timber Ridge Church. 
The forest was everywhere. It wasn't a pleasant 
prospect for a widow with nine children, but some- 
how they got along. Of Sam's five brothers and 
three sisters we know almost nothing. They had 
no influence on him. For his mother, in spite of 
her almost Spartan sternness, he kept an abiding 
affection. 

When Sam lived at Timber Ridge Church, what 
was known as the "Old Field School" was kept in 
a much-dilapidated building that had been oc- 
cupied by Washington Academy. This academy 
was destined to be famous, for later it became 
Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, 
of which Robert E. Lee, the famous general, was 
at one time president. The "Field School" was 
an elementary affair. During the late fall and 
in the winter were the only times when Sam could 
attend with anything like regularity. The rest 
of the year he had his share of farm work to do. 
If he had a few spare minutes, he was sometimes 



A FRONTIER LAD 



5 



allowed to hurry to the school and take his place 
in the spelling-class. Under this highly unfavor- 
able arrangement, Sam seems to have learned 
reading, writing, and the rudiments of ciphering. 

He went to school, too, apparently, in Tennessee 
for a little while, but advantages there were even 
more meager than in Rockbridge County. All 
told, his schoolroom education could not have 
covered many months. Like Lincoln, however, 
he read what books he could get — such books 
as frontier folk had brought along, tucked away 
among farm and household effects that doubtless 
seemed to them more valuable and necessary. 

One of these books happened to be Alexander 
Pope's version of the "Iliad." Critics of to-day 
have found much fault with Pope's translation, 
alleging that it is not an accurate rendering of the 
original text, that its language is stilted, and that 
it does not truly reflect the Greek spirit. How- 
ever that may be, it was for many years a favorite 
with cultivated men; and it is interesting to find 
that it was eagerly read by the boy Houston in the 
Tennessee wilderness, on what was then the Ameri- 
can frontier. It is said that he learned a great 
deal of it by heart and was fond of quoting from 
it. But all his life Houston's reading was limited. 



6 



SAM HOUSTON 



We know that he read some of Shakespeare and 
appreciated him, as well as a few other English 
classics. When he was commander-in-chief of 
the Texan forces, he studied Caesar's " Commen- 
taries on the Gallic War," because he valued their 
austere literary style (which is not so unlike that 
of the " Memoirs" of our own General Grant) and 
the lessons in warfare that they contained. Late 
in life he came to read the King James version of 
the Bible very regularly, and reminiscences of 
Biblical language are to be found in many of his 
speeches. 

The home of the Houstons in Tennessee was, 
as has been said, only about eight miles from the 
Tennessee River. The fact does not seem very 
important in itself ; but this accidental location 
was to mean not a little in Houston's life. 

It happened in this way. Just across that 
river were settled the Cherokee Indians. Do not 
suppose that this particular tribe was to be reckoned 
among the " savage red men" pictured by so many 
writers. The Cherokees had a written language 
devised by Sequoia, one of their own chiefs, and 
this written language was so ingenious that when 
the great trees of California were to be named, it 
was decided to call them after this clever American 



A FRONTIER LAD 



7 



chieftain. Never was a higher honor conferred 
on a red man ; for the Sequoia groves of California 
are famous the world over. The characters in- 
vented by Sequoia are used by the Cherokee 
Indians to-day. Even in Houston's time the Cher- 
okees were an intelligent tribe; they lived in log 
cabins, tilled the fields, and in a number of cases 
held negro slaves. It may be said that in many 
respects their manners and customs were not very 
different from those of the whites just across the 
river. Yet there was about them the tang of a 
free, forest life ; and this it was, with the wish for 
adventure, that attracted young Sam Houston 
to them. 

His elder brothers saw fit to place him as a clerk 
in a trader's store, but he had little relish for life 
behind a counter, and one day he disappeared. 
In time they learned that he had crossed the river 
and sought a home among the Cherokees. There 
he was made heartily welcome and adopted into 
the household of Oolooteka, one of the sub-chiefs. 
The name given him was Coloneh, meaning "the 
rover." Houston wore the Indian dress and gained 
a thorough command of the difficult Cherokee 
language. The knowledge that he acquired of 
Indian ways and character he made good use of 



8 



SAM HOUSTON 



in after days as the champion and spokesman of 
the Indians against unjust treatment on the part 
of their white neighbors. 

Houston was like the Indians in more ways than 
one. He was fond of dressing as they did, because 
he had the same taste for gay colors and striking 
effects. He was simple and brave; he was quiet 
and reserved and dignified; but when he wanted 
to speak he could speak with ease and very much 
to the point. His bearing was of the stately kind 
that we have read of — and some of us seen — in 
Indian chiefs. Then, too, he had a shrewd way of 
"sizing up" people — a trait of the Indians, though 
of course not peculiar to them. 

He once said that he " never knew a case when 
a treaty was made and carried out in good faith 
which was violated by the Indians." A bit of 
his advice to white men about dealing with Indians 
was to be sensible, and then the Indians would 
follow suit. A silly prejudice gave rise to the silly 
remark: "The only good Indian is a dead one." 
Houston said: "I might have hated the Indians 
if I had a soul no bigger than a shellbark." 

The Indians — not only the Cherokees but 
other tribes — were attached to Houston. In 
1846, when he was a member of the United States 



A FRONTIER LAD 



9 



Senate, forty Indians from Texas were in Wash- 
ington and met him. "They all ran to him," 
says an eyewitness, "and hugged him like bears." 
This was truly an unusual demonstration for 
Indians; and finer yet were the words of one of 
them, who said that Houston had been "too 
subtle" for them on the warpath, "too powerful 
in battle, too magnanimous in victory, too wise in 
council, and too true in faith." All his life long 
Houston felt that whatever his fortunes among 
the whites, he had, in this alien race, friends that 
would never fail him. 

After he had left the store, Houston was sought 
for weeks by his family. Finally his brothers 
found out where he was. They argued with him 
and begged him to go back. Probably they valued 
his help in the farm work, and thought they could 
keep him at that, even if he wouldn't work in a 
store. He ended the talk by saying he "would 
rather measure deer tracks than tape." So they 
left him, quite sure, no doubt, in their own minds, 
that he would come to little good. 



CHAPTER II 
Serving with "Old Hickory" 

Until he was eighteen, Houston remained with 
his Indian friends. He joined in the sports of 
the Cherokee lads, measured up with them in 
prowess as a hunter, and learned all the lore of 
the forest, though he never won the reputation 
of a Daniel Boone or a Davy Crockett as a crack 
shot and frontiersman. Before he was twenty- 
one he entered the army and became a disciplined 
soldier; then he turned to the law. Thus he 
accustomed himself, as Crockett and Boone never 
did, to a more settled and organized life. He had 
learned practical lessons as well, such as being 
resourceful under the rude and difficult conditions 
of the wilderness and of unsettled communities; 
and so by his experience and training he was re- 
markably well fitted for the part he was to play 
in the early history of Texas. 

While he was living among the Cherokees, he 
occasionally visited the settlements for various 

IO 



SERVING WITH "OLD HICKORY " n 



supplies — clothing for himself, ammunition, and 
trinkets for his Indian comrades. For the pur- 
chase of these things he had run a little into debt, 
so he decided to go back and earn enough to pay 
what he owed. To do this he opened a country 
school. His learning was limited, but he was 
confident enough to raise the price of tuition from 
six to eight dollars a year. This, however, does 
not seem extravagant, especially when we learn 
that only one-third of the sum was paid in cash. 
Of the remainder, one-third was paid in cotton 
stuffs, such as he might use for his shirts, and one- 
third in corn delivered at the mill at the rate of 
33i cents a bushel. It is recorded that Houston's 
school was very successful, and that he was soon 
able to pay off his debt. 

Long after, when he was a United States senator, 
he said to a friend : " At noon after the luncheon, 
which I and my pupils ate together out of our 
baskets, I would go out into the woods and cut 
me a 1 sour wood ' stick, trim it carefully in circular 
spirals, and thrust one-half of it into the fire, 
which would turn it blue, leaving the other half 
white. With this emblem of ornament and au- 
thority in my hand, dressed in a hunting-shirt 
of flowered calico, a long queue down my back, 



12 



SAM HOUSTON 



and the sense of authority over my pupils, I ex- 
perienced a higher feeling of dignity and self- 
satisfaction than from any office or honor which 
I have since held." Houston had humor enough 
to appreciate the funny side of this experience. 
It is also interesting to note that he was one of 
the many distinguished Americans — such as 
Lincoln and Garfield, for example — who at some 
time in their careers "taught school." 

Sam attended an academy at Maryville for a 
term or two, and then his formal "education" 
was completed. What we call the War of 1812 
was in progress. A recruiting squad came to 
quiet Maryville in 1813, when Sam was twenty. 
There were bugles and banners and trim sergeants 
in their tidy uniforms, which, in those days, when 
service clothes and equipment were showier than 
they are to-day, must have brought a real breath 
of adventure and romance to backwoods boys in 
their homespuns. That Houston would be among 
the first to enlist might easily be foreseen. 

He was well thought of among his neighbors, 
and even then it was predicted that he was marked 
out for a "career." People had said he would die 
in a madhouse, or be a great Indian chief, or be- 
come governor of the State. The last of these 



SERVING WITH "OLD HICKORY" 13 

was to be true, but it did not seem so when he 
stepped forward and took a big silver dollar from 
a drum head (a sign of enlistment) and entered the 
ranks. His friends wanted nothing less than a 
commission for him and were outspoken in com- 
plaint. Houston curtly retorted, "I would much 
sooner honor the ranks than disgrace an appoint- 
ment. You don't know me now, but you shall 
hear of me." He seems always to have had a 
certain belief in his future, and sometimes he 
expressed it in this rather direct manner. 

On the very day he enlisted he was made a 
sergeant, and away he went, with admonitions 
from his good mother, to join his regiment, the 
Seventh Infantry. He was stationed at various 
encampments in Alabama and Tennessee, and won 
the name of being the best drillmaster in the 
whole command. Although he did not see active 
service against Great Britain, he did not long re- 
main in the ranks. His friends brought influence 
to bear on President Madison, and while his regi- 
ment was quartered at Knoxville, Houston re- 
ceived a commission as ensign in the Thirty-ninth 
Infantry. On December 31, 1813, he was com- 
missioned third lieutenant. 

He was now to meet one of the outstanding 



14 



SAM HOUSTON 



figures in American history, and to make a friend- 
ship that should affect his whole future. Down 
in Alabama the Creek Indians, originally a power- 
ful tribe, were being shouldered out of their homes 
and lands by the unceasing aggression of the 
whites. It was the old story of injustice on the 
one side and fierce resentment on the other, that 
has so often been told during the occupation and 
development of this country by white men. 

The Creeks, following the Indian mode of war- 
fare, made a fierce attack upon the settlements, 
and on August 10, 1813, a wholesale massacre of 
the whites took place at Fort Mims, Alabama. 
In retaliation, the Indian country was invaded 
by troops under command of General John Coffee 
and, more especially, of General Andrew Jackson. 
The Creeks, however, were not easily to be sub- 
dued. The fighting remnant of the tribe, some 
700 warriors, with 300 women and children, 
gathered at Tohopeka, or Horseshoe Bend, on 
the Tallapoosa River in Alabama. Here the 
river made a great serpentine twist; and the 
Indians built log breastworks across the neck of 
the peninsula that jutted into the sluggish waters. 

On March 27, 18 14, General Jackson arrived 
at the spot with 2000 men, one of whom was 



SERVING WITH "OLD HICKORY " 15 



Lieutenant Sam Houston. An examination of the 
Indian position revealed on the land side an ap- 
proach some three hundred and fifty yards wide, 
fortified, with a skill rare among Indians, by a 
triple row of thick pine logs set vertically and 
zigzagged like the breastworks of military en- 
gineers. For the remainder of its extent the 
peninsula was surrounded by high banks, and the 
river was too deep to be forded. The area held 
by the Indians was about 100 acres, most of it 
covered with trees and undergrowth. 

The battle began at about ten in the morning. 
Jackson had two little fieldpieces which made 
absolutely no impression on the Indian fortifica- 
tions. There were some Cherokee allies with 
Jackson, and a number of these swam the river 
and managed to get back with the canoes that the 
Creeks had secreted among the bushes along the 
shore. In these canoes troops crossed to attack 
the Creeks from the rear at the same time that a 
terrific charge was being made upon the fortifica- 
tions in front. 

The attacking force swarmed over the palisade, 
and then followed a hand-to-hand fight in which 
no quarter was given or asked. When the first 
rush was made, Houston was well in front of the 



i6 



SAM HOUSTON 



extreme right of the line. Just as he reached the 
top of the palisade, an arrow pierced deeply into 
his side. He called to another lieutenant to draw 
out the arrow. The lieutenant failed twice. "Try 
again," Houston shouted at him, "and if you fail 
this time, I will smite you to the earth." Need- 
less to say, the lieutenant, using his utmost strength, 
tore out the arrow, leaving a jagged wound from 
which poured a stream of blood. 

Houston went to the rear to have his wound 
dressed, and while he was being attended by the 
surgeon, Jackson, who had been watching the 
fight from horseback, caught sight of him. Riding 
up, Jackson ordered him not to return. He dis- 
obeyed orders, however, and when Jackson called 
for volunteers to storm a ravine in which a few 
warriors had found refuge, among a few daring 
fellows who answered, there was Houston, the 
wounded lieutenant ! He shouted to his men to 
follow and plunged forward. He had not gone far 
when two bullets shattered the upper part of his 
right arm, and he staggered back out of range. 
No one had followed him, but he had won the ad- 
miration of Andrew Jackson. From that time 
Jackson's confidence in Houston never wavered. 
As he went onward to the Presidency he was al- 



SERVING WITH "OLD HICKORY " 17 



ways Houston's patron ; and Houston on his part 
was Jackson's stanch supporter, in politics and out. 

For two months Houston was moved from one 
post to another, with no proper surgical attend- 
ance. At last, carried on a horse-litter, he reached 
his mother's cabin. In great pain as he was, worn 
by his wounds, and emaciated through lack of 
suitable food, he was thought almost beyond 
recovery. His mother said she would not have 
recognized him had it not been for his eyes, which 
still held something of their old-time alert ex- 
pression. 

We may be sure that Houston, even when 
fighting with such valor, never abandoned his 
fundamental belief that in troubles with the 
Indians the whites were almost invariably the 
aggressors. He had entered the army, however, 
for such duty as might fall to him, even though 
that duty might be distasteful ; and he was bound 
to do his best under the immediate command of 
Jackson, the popular military leader of those days. 

Despite his mother's care, Sam did not get 
better, so he was taken to Maryville and then to 
Knoxville, where he finally obtained a surgeon 
under whose charge he slowly improved. In 
time he was able to make a horseback journey to 
c 



i8 



SAM HOUSTON 



Washington, reaching there just after it had been 
raided by the British and the Capitol burned. 
Not yet strong enough to report for active duty, 
he passed the winter at Lexington, Virginia, and 
then went again to Tennessee. 

A letter of his has come to light, written in the 
spring of 1815 from the little town of Dandridge, 
in Jefferson County, Tennessee. At that time he 
evidently thought he would be retired from the 
army; and he speaks of seeking his fortune in 
Knoxville, remarking that "if I come no better 
speed than I have done heretofore, it will be some 
time." 

Jackson had won his great victory at New 
Orleans on January 8, 181 5. Peace had already 
been concluded with the United States commis- 
sioners at Ghent, in Belgium; but it sometimes 
took as much as six weeks for even fast sailing- 
vessels to cross the Atlantic, so that the news of 
the peace did not reach this country until several 
weeks after the battle. In his letter Houston 
says, ". . . People here are much gratified at 
the restoration of peace," and adds, . .As 
relates to me, I would not want peace if I did not 
believe it was promoting the happiness of the com- 
munity at large. . . 



SERVING WITH "OLD HICKORY " 19 



Houston was not retired, however, but instead 
was promoted to a second lieutenancy for his brav- 
ery at Horseshoe Bend. He was assigned to the 
First Infantry, May 17, 181 5, and shortly was or- 
dered from camp at Knoxville to duty at New 
Orleans. In a skiff with two other young men — 
one of whom was E. D. White, afterward governor 
of Louisiana — he voyaged down the Cumberland 
and the Mississippi to Natchez. 

As they approached Natchez they saw far down 
the river what seemed to be a large boat on fire. 
It turned out that the columns of smoke they had 
seen were from one of the first steamboats to make 
successful trips up the Mississippi. They abandoned 
their skiff at Natchez and enjoyed the amazing 
experience of a ride to New Orleans on board a 
real steamer. 

At New Orleans Houston had his wound operated 
on again, nearly at the expense of his life. In 
April he went to New York for further treatment, 
and then was assigned to the office of the adjutant- 
general of the Southern Division at Nashville. 
This wound of his never entirely healed and always 
gave him more or less trouble. 



CHAPTER III 
Early Public Life 

Houston was not to continue much longer in 
the army. Until November, 1817, he was em- 
ployed in the office at Nashville, doing the routine 
work that fell to him. Then he was appointed a 
sub-agent of the United States among the Chero- 
kees. Jackson recommended him very highly for 
the post, and it must have been quite to Houston's 
liking, for it brought him again among his Indian 
friends. His long acquaintance with them, and 
his knowledge of their language and their affairs, 
soon made him of great service. 

In 18 1 6 the various tribal chiefs had been pre- 
vailed on to sign a treaty by the terms of which 
they surrendered title to a large tract of their 
choicest and most desirable lands in eastern Ten- 
nessee. Many members of the tribe rebelled at 
this and refused to leave their homes and hunting- 
grounds, treaty or no treaty. This problem was 

20 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



21 



turned over to Houston as the one best qualified 
to adjust matters. 

He went up to Washington with a delegation of 
the Indians, there to arrange the boundaries of 
the Cherokee reservation and to obtain payment 
for the land that had been sold. He finally made 
a peaceable settlement, and his immediate su- 
periors thanked him for what he had done, but he 
got himself into trouble with the secretary of war, 
John C. Calhoun. It was all about a question of 
official etiquette. As spokesman for the Cher- 
okees, Houston wore to Washington the Indian 
garb that he was accustomed to wear when among 
them. He was always rather fond of the pic- 
turesque in his dress, and, besides, he liked to 
identify himself with his proteges in this way. 

When he appeared thus before Calhoun, how- 
ever, the secretary stood quite on ceremony and 
reprimanded him in a manner that Houston greatly 
resented. Very likely the secretary was right — 
Houston should have come in uniform ; but Hous- 
ton was much offended, and the trouble was to be 
carried further. 

The Indian country was a kind of no-man's 
land for all sorts of white ruffians and hard char- 
acters — men continually busy with lawless plans. 



22 



SAM HOUSTON 



Florida was still a Spanish province, and a group 
of these freebooters were making a practice of 
smuggling slaves from Florida through the Indian 
country to the adjacent settlements. Houston 
stepped in to break up this slave trade, and, through 
friends at Washington, those engaged in it tried to 
injure him by bringing against him false charges 
of misconduct in office. 

Any such charges were without foundation and 
absurd on the face of them, and Houston was 
abundantly able to clear himself before Calhoun 
and President Madison. Calhoun, however, chose 
to conduct the official inquiry in a rather unfriendly 
manner, and this further angered Houston, who, 
when he had returned with the delegation, re- 
signed from the army, March i, 1818. 

He had served for nearly five years. He had 
risen from the ranks to be first lieutenant, and dis- 
tinguished himself for gallantry, had won the regard 
of his superiors, and had gained the confidence of 
"Old Hickory," like himself a man of the frontier. 
That he possessed a high degree of military talent 
was not to be shown until a later period of his life. 

He now made up his mind to study law. There 
was then in the United States only one law school 
of any consequence — that of Judge Reeve, in a 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



23 



primitive little building in the famous old town of 
Litchfield, Connecticut. Calhoun had been a 
pupil of Reeve's. Young men who wished to be 
admitted to the bar, however, usually studied by 
themselves or in the office of some established 
attorney. In Houston's part of the country a 
lawyer was expected to go into politics — "the 
law" was simply a preliminary to running for 
some office. The lawyers jogged about on horse- 
back on their circuits from one session of court to 
another, with a law book or two in their saddle- 
bags and a pistol under their coats. When court 
was held, half of the countryside would flock in, 
for it was a great diversion to hear the flights of 
oratory and listen to the combats of wit between 
opposing counsel. There were bustle and stir in 
the taverns, and the whole affair was rather a 
gala day for the community. 

Houston studied for six months in the office of 
Hon. James Trimble at Nashville and then was 
easily admitted to practice. He never claimed to 
be a well-equipped lawyer, but he was quite able 
to hold his own among his associates, most of 
whom had had a training no more thorough than 
his own. In the pleadings of such men there was 
usually more native eloquence of a flamboyant 



24 



SAM HOUSTON 



sort than profound knowledge of textbooks and 
precedents. Houston was a ready and convincing 
speaker, with plenty of common sense, and though 
he started in debt and had to buy his small office 
library on credit, he did well from the first in his 
new profession. 

In the little town of Lebanon, Tennessee, where 
he "hung out his shingle," he had a good friend in 
Isaac Golladay, storekeeper and postmaster, who 
trusted him for his clothing, rented him an office 
for twelve dollars a year, and paid the postage on 
his letters. In those days letter-postage was 
twenty-five cents, and was paid by the person 
who received the letter. Houston was like the 
Indians in another respect — he never forgot a 
kindness. In 1853, when Frederick Golladay, a 
son of Isaac, was taken sick while traveling in 
Texas, he was carried to the Houston home and 
there nursed back to health, Houston himself 
spending much time in the sick-room, making 
Golladay comfortable and beguiling the hours 
with entertaining stories of his adventurous life. 

Houston had his eye on politics, and he was not 
long in becoming locally prominent. To begin 
with, Andrew Jackson was Houston's patron, and 
Jackson held Tennessee politically in the hollow 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



25 



of his hand. But there was more than that. 
Houston could amuse a knot of listeners in a 
country store by his yarns ; he could impress men 
and lead them by his natural dignity and his gift 
for speech-making. Though of pronounced opin- 
ions, he was at the same time always broad minded 
and adaptable. So it came about that in the same 
year, 1819, he was appointed adjutant-general of 
Tennessee, with rank of colonel — an office that 
was more political than military — and also 
district attorney for the Davidson district, with 
residence at Nashville. 

He made a very acceptable district attorney 
but soon found that the fees were too small for 
him to live on, and at the end of the year he re- 
turned to private practice. In 182 1 he was 
elected major-general of the Tennessee militia, 
and in 1823 he was fairly started on his larger 
political career. In that year, at the age of thirty, 
he was elected a representative in Congress from 
the ninth Tennessee district. 

Jackson gave him a glowing letter of introduc- 
tion to the veteran Jefferson, who was then living 
in honored retirement at his fine estate of Monti- 
cello, near Charlottesville, Virginia. The letter 
spoke of Houston as "a particular friend of mine/' 



26 SAM HOUSTON 

and added: "He has attained his present stand- 
ing without the extrinsic advantages of fortune 
or education, and has sustained, in his various 
promotions from the common soldier to the major- 
general, the character of the high-minded and 
honorable man." The meeting with Jefferson 
must have been inspiring to such an ardent young 
Democrat as Houston; and we may suppose, too, 
that the aging statesman was glad to meet a young 
man of whom Jackson could write such praise. 

Houston was in the House for four years — two 
terms. There were giants in Congress in those 
days. The young representative from a newly 
apportioned district of Tennessee was in the 
company of such men as the venerable Nathaniel 
Macon; John Randolph of Roanoke, the veteran 
of the House, boasting his descent from Pocahontas ; 
James K. Polk ; the scholarly and polished Edward 
Everett; dashing Henry Clay; and, ablest of 
them all, Daniel Webster, with his leonine head 
and classic periods. Nor must we forget Jackson, 
who was elected a United States senator not long 
after Houston's election as representative, and 
who served with Houston as a member of the com- 
mittee on military affairs. 

Of course Houston was a strong partisan of the 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



27 



Jacksonian wing of the Democratic party. He 
took part in some of the debates, and he studied 
the able legislators about him. All the while, he 
was quietly getting a grasp of the principles of 
statecraft and an understanding of big national 
questions. He was rapidly becoming a versatile 
and ready man, but at the same time he lost none 
of his own strong individuality. Petty political 
tricks were always beneath him. Party feeling 
was strong in those young days of our country, 
and that feeling frequently expressed itself in 
personal animosity and abuse to an extent that 
we to-day should think very ungenerous and 
foolish. Houston had a rather vigorous temper, 
and when he got into a dispute he was likely to 
lay about him with a right good will. Particularly 
was he sensitive in regard to anything that ap- 
peared to affect his personal honor, public or 
private. But he was no hand to connive or bar- 
gain or drive the small politician's trade. 

It was quite natural that he should be a sturdy 
adherent of Jackson. There were the personal 
reasons that have already been stated, and there 
were other reasons in the similar temperaments of 
the two and their general agreement on public 
questions. They were from the same part of the 



28 



SAM HOUSTON 



country, they had a history in many ways similar^ 
and they both believed very honestly in the Demo- 
cratic principles of Jefferson. 

Houston left Congress without having won any 
special reputation in debate, perhaps a little to 
the disappointment of his supporters in Tennessee, 
who believed him to be an effective orator. He 
had, indeed, as we have seen, a gift for public 
address. When he was leaving Lebanon for 
Nashville, to enter on his duties as district at- 
torney, he gave his farewell address so movingly, 
it is said, that all who heard him were in tears. 
From that day until, at the age of seventy, he 
bade good-by to his fellow-citizens in the city 
named after him, Houston could always make a 
telling speech. His oratory was touched with the 
fashion of the times; it was often " flowery," but 
it was also instinct with common sense and some- 
times lightened by a lively humor. Houston could 
sway an audience of the frontier type — the audi- 
ence that he best understood — with unerring 
skill. It was said of him that two things could 
bring out Texas folks in crowds — the circus and 
Sam Houston ! Perhaps this association is un- 
fortunate, for Houston never forgot his dignity 
and never appealed to the mob spirit. 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



29 



In 1824 Jackson was a candidate for the presi- 
dency, the other candidates being John Quincy 
Adams, Henry Clay, and William H. Crawford of 
Georgia, who had been minister to France and 
secretary of war and of the treasury. The elec- 
toral vote finally stood as follows : Jackson, 99 ; 
Adams, 84; Crawford, 41; Clay, 37. No one, 
therefore, had a majority. The House of Repre- 
sentatives elected Adams, and Jackson returned 
to private life. Four years later he was elected 
President by a decisive majority over Adams. 

After the election of 1824, a party slander was 
started by the statement that Clay had been in- 
duced to throw his support to Adams by the 
promise of being made secretary of state. John 
Randolph, who could be as bitter as he was ec- 
centric, spoke of Adams's association with Clay 
as "a combination of the Puritan with the black- 
leg." There was no foundation for the story, but 
it did Clay much harm. The truth of the matter 
was simply that, as he stood fourth on the list of 
electoral votes, Clay could not be considered by 
the House of Representatives; and he then gave 
his personal support to Adams. 

Clay offered a resolution for an inquiry into his 
conduct. This resolution was opposed by the 



30 



SAM HOUSTON 



Jackson men, including Houston, who sent to his 
constituency an address explaining his reason for 
the position he took. If Clay had a personal 
grievance, he said, he ought to take it to the courts ; 
any inquiry by Congress was sure to be conducted 
as a purely political matter and would amount to 
nothing. Houston's address was well written — 
at once strong and dignified. Somehow the frontier 
boy had acquired a literary style which, if a bit 
cumbersome for our modem taste, was neverthe- 
less clear, correct, and finished. 

Some have thought that there was another 
motive in the address — that it was intended to 
gain further popular support for Jackson. Many 
had held that, as Jackson had a plurality of elec- 
toral votes, it was he who should have been chosen 
President. However that may be, the tide of 
Jackson's popularity was swelling to the flood. 
He defeated Adams in 1828 by the surprising vote 
of 178 to 83, and in 1832 was triumphantly re- 
elected. The country had never known a leader 
like him. It is possible that Houston may have 
considered the address a legitimate means of aid- 
ing a man he so intensely admired. 

While Houston was serving in Congress, during 
his second term, he fought a duel with a man who 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



31 



challenged him. In a speech to his friends after- 
wards, he said that on principle he was opposed 
to duelling, but that on this occasion he had felt 
obliged to defend his honor. 

We must remember that in his day a duel was 
a frequent, although foolish, way of settling a 
" gentleman's quarrel." The whole nation had 
been shocked by the affair between two of its 
most brilliant men, Alexander Hamilton and 
Aaron Burr. Hamilton, at the age of forty-seven, 
had fallen and left his great constructive work 
unfinished. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale 
College, denounced duelling in a celebrated sermon 
from Proverbs xxviii. 17: "A man that doeth 
violence to the blood of any person shall flee to 
the pit; let no man stay him." Anti-duelling 
societies were formed. But duelling continued, 
especially in the South and Southwest. Only a 
few years before Houston accepted the challenge 
sent him, an encounter had taken place at Bladens- 
burg, Maryland, between Commodore Decatur 
and Commodore Barron, with Decatur as the 
sacrifice. 

In Houston's day no such thing as civil service 
reform had been heard of, and there was a host of 
offices of every sort to be doled out by each ad- 



3* 



SAM HOUSTON 



ministration as it came into power. Appointments 
were only too often made on the basis of party 
services or party favoritism, rather than on that 
of merit or of special fitness. "To the victor be- 
long the spoils/' was the general idea of all parties. 

Houston did not think much of a certain Colonel 
Irwin, who was made postmaster at Nashville by 
the Adams administration. He said his say re- 
garding the Colonel, and emphatic language seems 
to have been bandied about rather freely. Two 
more colonels and a general got mixed up in the 
discussion. Colonel Irwin picked Colonel John 
T. Smith to convey a challenge to Houston by way 
of Colonel MacGregor, one of Houston's friends. 
MacGregor had his opinion of Smith — who was, 
we are told, a species of border ruffian — and when 
Smith handed him the challenge in front of the 
Nashville Inn, he let the paper flutter to the ground. 

Strange to say, no fight followed between the 
two colonels, and news was taken to Houston, 
then stopping at the Inn, of what had occurred 
outside. A certain General William White was 
among the group around Houston, and he stirred 
Houston's ire by remarking that he didn't think 
such treatment fair to Smith. 

"If you, sir, have any grievance," said Houston 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



33 



to White, "I will give you any satisfaction you 
may demand/' 

"I have nothing to do with your difficulty/' 
answered White, "but I presume you know what 
is due from one gentleman to another." That 
was all then; but the report came to the General 
that Nashville thought Houston had cowed him; 
and feeling his courage assailed, he dispatched a 
challenge to Houston on his own account. Houston 
at once accepted. 

The duel was fought at sunrise, September 23, 
1826, at a spot known by the curious name of 
Linkumpinch, just across the line in Kentucky. 
As he took his place, Houston stuck a bullet into 
his mouth, Jackson having told him that something 
to bite on would make his aim steadier. His aim, 
at all events, was steady enough, for he shot White 
through the hip. He himself escaped without a 
scratch. 

Houston and White had both evaded arrest in 
Tennessee, and in the following June, the grand 
jury of Simpson County, Kentucky, returned an 
indictment against Houston for having shot at 
William White with intent to kill. The governor 
of Kentucky forthwith demanded Houston's sur- 
render, but the governor of Tennessee replied that 

D 



34 



SAM HOUSTON 



investigation showed Houston had only acted in 
self-defense, and that therefore he would not be 
surrendered. Even if it had come to a trial for 
felony, we may be sure that no jury in those parts 
would have dreamed of finding Houston guilty. 

" Thank God," Houston exclaimed, "that my 
antagonist was injured no worse!" White re- 
covered, and Houston's popularity was, if pos- 
sible, greater than ever. 

The same year — 1827 — in which Houston 
was indicted by a Kentucky grand jury, he was 
elected governor of his own State of Tennessee. 
The other candidates were Newton Cannon and 
Willie Blount, who was then sixty years of age and 
was called "the war governor" because he had 
held office during the War of 181 2. Houston's 
majority was 12,000. The vote cast for Blount 
was surprisingly small. Cannon had little chance 
because he was not so eager for Jackson as Ten- 
nessee thought he ought to be. Houston was a 
few months over thirty-four at the time of the 
election, August 2, 1827. 

There was a little boy who saw him on that 
day — saw him as a hero of boyish fancy, and 
never forgot how he looked. He has left us this 
description of Houston's striking costume : 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



35 



" He wore on that day . . . a tall, bell-crowned, 
medium-brimmed, shining black beaver hat, shin- 
ing black patent-leather military stock or cravat, 
incased by a standing collar, ruffled shirt, black 
satin vest, shining black silk pants gathered to 
the waistband with legs full, . . . and a gorgeous, 
red-ground, many-colored gown or Indian hunt- 
ing-shirt, fastened at the waist by a huge red sash 
covered with fancy bead-work, with an immense 
silver buckle, embroidered silk stockings, and 
pumps with large silver buckles." 

So Colonel Claiborne, when living at Goliad in 
Texas, described the glittering figure he had be- 
held on an elegant dapple-gray horse, that far- 
away August election day. When among the 
people whom he knew and who knew and idolized 
him, Houston liked to disregard the conventions 
of attire and indulge in such a color display. The 
same fondness has been true of many a cowboy 
or plainsman or scout, but perhaps no other man 
in modern public life, except possibly Lord Beacons- 
field, has ever equaled Houston in this respect. 

But however unconventional he may have been 
in his dress, Houston made an excellent governor. 
His administration was highly successful and served 
to confirm the general impression of his sound 



36 



SAM HOUSTON 



sense and his ability as a statesman. In due 
course he was renominated. Favorite of the all- 
powerful Jackson, governor of his State, popular 
among all classes, he seemed in a fair way to 
achieve the presidency. A president he was in- 
deed destined to become, but not of the United 
States. Domestic trouble occurred that seemed 
likely to blast his whole political future. 

We shall never know the details, nor the full 
right and wrong of it, but here is the gist of what 
we do know. In January, 1829, he married Miss 
Eliza Allen, who came of a prominent family in 
Sumner County. After three months his wife 
returned to her father's home, and although 
Houston wrote, asking the father to intercede in 
his behalf, she refused to go back to her husband. 
Houston was always silent on the matter, even 
when questioned by curious or ill-bred persons. 
He once wrote, "Eliza stands acquitted by me," 
and further than that he would not go. 

He at once addressed to General William Hall, 
speaker of the senate of Tennessee, a letter of 
resignation as governor that deserves to be quoted 
here in full because many of its expressions so 
well illustrate his character. He wrote as fol- 
lows : — 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



37 



"Sir: It has become my duty to resign the 
office of chief magistrate of the State, and to place 
in your hand the authority and responsibility 
which on such an event devolves on you by the 
provisions of the constitution. In dissolving the 
political connection which has so long and in such 
a variety of forms existed between the people of 
Tennessee and myself, no private affliction can 
forbid an expression of the grateful recollections 
so eminently due to the kind partialities of an 
indulgent public. From my earliest youth, what- 
ever of talent was committed to my care, has been 
honestly cultivated and expended for the common 
good; and at no period of a life which has cer- 
tainly been marked by a full portion of interesting 
events, have any views of private interest or 
private ambition been permitted to mingle in the 
higher duties of public trust. In reviewing the 
past I can only regret that my capacity for being 
useful was so unequal to the devotion of my heart, 
and it is one of the few consolations of my life that 
even had I been blessed with ability equal to my 
zeal, my country's generous support in every 
vicissitude of life has been more than equal to them 
both. That veneration for public opinion by which 
I have measured every act of my official life, has 



38 



SAM HOUSTON 



taught me to hold no delegated power which would 
not daily be renewed by my constituents, could 
the choice be daily submitted to a sensible expres- 
sion of their will. And although shielded by a 
perfect consciousness of undiminished claim to 
the confidence and support of my fellow-citizens, 
and delicately circumstanced as I am and by my 
own misfortunes more than the fault or contriv- 
ance of any one, overwhelmed by sudden calami- 
ties, it is certainly due to myself and more respectful 
to the world, that I retire from a position which, 
in the public judgment, I might seem to occupy 
by questionable authority. It yields me no 
small share of comfort, so far as I am capable of 
taking comfort from any circumstance, that in re- 
signing my executive charge, I am placing it in the 
hands of one whose integrity and worth have long 
been tried; who understands and will pursue the 
true interests of the State ; and who, in the hour 
of success and in the hour of adversity, has been 
the consistent and valued friend of the great and 
good man now enjoying the triumph of his virtues 
in the conscious security of a nation's gratitude. 

Sam Houston." 

By " the great and good man" he of course means 
Jackson. 



EARLY PUBLIC LIFE 



39 



After reading this letter, one feels like exclaim- 
ing, " There speaks a man!" His idea of conduct 
in public office is expressed with singular skill, 
and may be commended to every holder of an 
elective office in this or any other democracy. In 
what he says about holding "no delegated power 
which would not daily be renewed by my con- 
stituents," he anticipates in a very interesting 
way the idea of the "recall," which has in our own 
time been agitated in American politics. The 
basis of that idea is that it should be possible for 
the people to vote to retire a public official before 
his term expires, if he acts contrary to promises 
made when he was elected or fails to carry out the 
popular will. 

The whole document shows the heart of the 
man speaking out under stress with an honesty 
and a frankness that at once carry conviction. 
All in all, for literary style and for its declaration 
of high ideals, it may safely be set down as a re- 
markable production. 

Houston's resignation was followed by a general 
uproar all over the State. Nothing was now too 
bad for some people to say of the man who but 
a few short months before had been so generally 
admired. Houston quietly left Nashville. His 



40 



SAM HOUSTON 



wife obtained a divorce on the ground of abandon- 
ment, married a Dr. Douglass, lived for some years 
at Gallatin, Tennessee, and was as reticent as 
Houston regarding the separation. Both treated 
it as a private matter, and we may very properly 
follow their example. 



CHAPTER IV 



Living with Indians 

When Houston decided that it was best for 
him to leave the State among whose hills he had 
spent happy years — the State in which he had 
been so successful and whose people he had tried 
so faithfully to serve — he turned to the Indians 
among whom he had once before found shelter. 
He knew they wouldn't care two straws what 
white enemies might be saying of him, and would 
only be glad to welcome him back. 

Oolooteka was still alive, sixty or more now, 
grown portlier and a little gray. He did not live 
among the main body of the tribe any longer, but 
had gone out to the Arkansas River with a band 
of Cherokees who had left their old haunts. The 
warlike Osages did not want these strange Indians 
in their territory, but the government finally 
adjusted the difficulty, and the Cherokees had 
their main settlement where the Illinois flows into 

41 



42 



SAM HOUSTON 



the Arkansas. Oolooteka was of more importance 
than before. Back east he was only a sub-chief, 
but now the western Cherokees made him their 
big chief, and he lived almost like the patriarchs 
that we read of in the Old Testament. 

Twelve negro slaves were his, and he had a 
great herd of five hundred cattle. His dwelling 
stood in a clearing under the sycamores and cotton- 
wood trees, and its doors swung open to Coloneh, 
the Rover. Perhaps, if you had chanced that way, 
you might have seen the chief and Sam Houston, 
seated by each other on the floor, helping them- 
selves from the great trencher of coarse hominy, 
and talking eagerly of all that had happened since 
last they met. "Rest with us," invited Oolooteka. 
That night, when he wrapped himself in his blanket 
and lay down to rest, the wanderer felt more 
cheered than he had in many a day. 

Houston remained among the Indians for nearly 
three years. Quickly he slipped back into Indian 
dress and Indian ways. It would have been diffi- 
cult even to recognize him, for he let his hair grow 
long and wore it in a queue down his back, a style 
that he thought rather becoming when he was a 
backwoods school-teacher; his chin was now 
covered with a beard. He must have made a 



LIVING WITH INDIANS 



43 



brave sight when he was in full ceremonial dress, 
ready to join in the general council. He then 
wore elaborately beaded moccasins, yellow leg- 
gings, an embroidered white hunting-shirt, a red 
blanket, and a headdress of turkey feathers. 

The general council was a kind of powwow in 
which all matters of importance were decided by 
vote. This differed from the way the Cherokees 
governed themselves in their eastern reservation, 
where they had a constitution and a system of 
laws like the white man. As a member of Ooloo- 
teka's household, and a general favorite, Houston 
could not fail to have standing in these conferences. 
He was wise enough, though, being after all a 
white man and an outsider, not to attempt to take 
a leading part. 

On his way westward he had sent a note of fare- 
well to President Jackson. Jackson replied with 
words of sympathy and also alluded to a report 
which he said had come to him that Houston was 
thinking of invading Texas with an Indian force 
and setting up an empire there. Texas was then 
a part of Mexico, which in 182 1 had declared its 
independence of Spain. With his usual trust in 
his well-tried friend, Jackson wrote, "I cannot be- 
lieve you have any such chimerical, visionary 



44 



SAM HOUSTON 



scheme in view." Indeed, Houston had not. He 
was to make himself famous in Texas in due time, 
but not in that way. 

Although he chose to take only a modest part 
in the Cherokee council, Houston was all the 
while active for the welfare of the Indians. From 
Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson's story "Ramona," we 
learn how the Indians of the Far West were so 
often defrauded of their lands. The same kind of 
thing was true in the Middle West in Houston's 
time. Here is a specimen of it. 

There was an Indian Bureau at Washington in 
charge of a man named McKenney, who was not 
very watchful to see that his agents did the square 
thing by their Indian wards. The agents and the 
contractors who took jobs for furnishing supplies 
to the Indians generally swindled them if they had a 
fair chance. These agents managed to wheedle out 
of the Cherokees a desirable tract of land on the 
lower Arkansas. Each Indian voter was to get 
twenty-eight dollars as payment. This was small 
business enough, but even this was not done. The 
agents gave the Indians certificates, and when these 
certificates were presented, they were redeemed not 
in cash but in articles of trifling value — such as 
bottles of poor whisky and cheap blankets. 



LIVING WITH INDIANS 



45 



Such rascally work made Houston's blood boil. 
In 1830 he started off to Washington with a few of 
the Indians and there he spoke his mind to such 
good effect, and proved his case so thoroughly, 
that five of the agents were promptly dismissed. 
The "Indian ring" naturally didn't enjoy having 
its questionable methods made known, so when 
Houston applied for the contract to furnish food 
supplies to the Indians that were about to be sent 
west of the Mississippi, the contractors fought 
him bitterly. 

Sam Houston put in a bid of eighteen cents a 
day per person for supplying the rations. Jackson 
was inclined to let the contract go to him, but 
McKenney, whose ideas as to food for the Indians 
were probably not so liberal as Houston's, said 
it ought to, and could, be done for seven cents a 
day. Some contractors had a way of putting in 
a low bid and then furnishing to the Indians stuff 
that was actually not fit to eat. A person called 
General Duff Green — a name that seems to come 
right out of " Martin Chuzzlewit" — succeeded 
in influencing Jackson so far that Houston failed 
to obtain the contract. Even so, unscrupulous 
newspapers made a good deal of the incident. As 
a matter of fact, there is not in Houston's whole 



46 SAM HOUSTON 

life one thing to show that he was ever dishonest 
or even greedy. On the contrary, in Texas he 
had many a chance to use his position to get wealth 
for himself, and he put them all aside. He was 
not a man who would seek to cheat the Indians. 
They were his friends. The untruths that were 
spread regarding him touched him on a vital point 
— his personal integrity and honor. He felt the 
gross injustice of them, and at last his feelings 
carried him too far. 

In the spring of 1832 he was again in Washington. 
The Honorable William Stanberry, a representa- 
tive from Ohio, while taking part in a certain de- 
bate, made a wholesale attack on Jackson's ad- 
ministration. Among other things he raked up 
the Indian contract: "Was not the late secre- 
tary of war (General Eaton) removed," he asked, 
"because of his attempt fraudulently to give to 
Governor Houston the contract for Indian ra- 
tions?" A great deal of nonsense is uttered in 
public by men who should know better. The 
Honorable William Stanberry was uttering non- 
sense. 

It is to be regretted that Houston paid any 
attention to it; but at the outset he was at least 
courteous and not overhasty. He wrote a letter 



LIVING WITH INDIANS 



47 



asking if the remark quoted had been made. This 
letter he sent to Stanberry by the hand of Cave 
Johnson of Tennessee. Stanberry replied, not to 
Houston but to Johnson. His manner was in- 
sulting. He stated that he had received from 
Johnson, a letter signed by one Sam Houston (as 
if Houston were some one unworthy of his notice), 
but that he really could not admit that this Houston 
had any right to the information asked. 

Houston was angry clear through. "I'll intro- 
duce myself," said he, and he made no secret of 
his intention to thrash the Honorable William 
Stanberry on sight. Years before, he had cut a 
hickory stick on the grounds of "The Hermitage,' ' 
Jackson's home in Tennessee. This stick he had 
carried for a while and then given to a friend in 
Georgetown, near Washington. He now got it 
back and carried it with him whenever he went 
out. The Honorable William Stanberry was well 
aware of what was brewing, and armed himself 
with a pistol. Houston must have known that if 
he attacked a Member of Congress because of 
words that had been spoken in the course of de- 
bate, it would be considered what was known as 
a breach of legislative privilege. 

One evening he was walking along Pennsylvania 



48 



SAM HOUSTON 



Avenue in company with Representative Blair of 
Tennessee and Senator Buckner of Missouri, when 
Stanberry crossed the avenue and came face to 
face with them. Blair walked quickly away. 
"Are you Mr. Stanberry?" asked Houston. No 
sooner had Stanberry answered than Houston 
struck at him with the hickory cane. Buckner, 
who stood by, afterwards gave a full account of 
what happened. On this we need not dwell. 
Sufficient to say that Stanberry drew his pistol, 
but the old-fashioned lock snapped without dis- 
charging the weapon. Houston wrenched the 
pistol from Stanberry, chastised him severely, and 
then walked on. 

Stanberry wrote to the speaker of the House, 
claiming a breach of privilege. Houston was ar- 
rested and brought to the bar of the House. He 
selected as his counsel Francis Scott Key, so well 
known as the author of the splendid words of our 
national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." 
The trial dragged on for a month. Key's argu- 
ment was that "legislative privilege" could be 
held to protect a member of Congress only while 
he was, so to speak, on duty. Houston himself 
made a speech in his own defense. He had at- 
tacked Stanberry, he said, not for words spoken 



LIVING WITH INDIANS 



49 



in Congressional debate, but because of their 
publication to all the world in the columns of the 
National Intelligencer, a Washington newspaper, 
and because Stanberry had refused to answer his 
note. Furthermore, he said, when a member 
" brands a private citizen as a fraudulent villain," 
he forfeits any privilege. 

He was deeply moved, and parts of his speech, 
even to-day, ring out from the printed page so 
eloquently we feel sure that, aided by Houston's 
commanding personality, they must have made a 
strong impression. Some persons had referred to 
his resignation from the governorship and his 
departure from the State. "I have only to say 
to those who rebuke me at this time, when they 
see adversity pressing upon me, for myself, 

' I ask no sympathy nor need ; 
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree 
I planted. They have torn me, and I bleed.' " 

Thus he spoke, and it was finely said. And 
again: "If, when deeply wronged, I have fol- 
lowed the generous impulses of my heart, have 
violated the laws of my country and the privileges 
of this honorable body, I am willing to be held to 
my responsibility for so doing." 

It was finally voted that he be reprimanded by 

E 



SAM HOUSTON 



the Speaker. This was done in a perfunctory way. 
President Jackson supported Houston all through. 
" After a few more examples of the kind/' he is 
reported to have said, " members of Congress will 
learn to keep civil tongues in their heads/' General 
sentiment was with Houston, too. Even though 
their own privilege of speaking in debate had been 
violated, the members of the House voted merely 
to reprimand him, and then by a ballot of only 
106 to 89. 

It was a mistake on Houston's part, but it was 
in accord with the traditions and practices of the 
frontier on which he had grown to manhood ; and 
those were days when that kind of personal violence 
was not frowned upon, as it would be now, by 
public opinion. Then, too, we must remember 
that he was naturally of a high temper and that 
this temper had been set on edge by his personal 
misfortunes and his sensitiveness to what enemies 
said concerning him. As Sam Houston lived, he 
grew. Afterwards, in Texas, he received a chal- 
lenge from a man with no further comment than 
to tell his secretary to file it as " challenge 14" 
and pleasantly ask the gentleman to be so good as 
to wait his turn. A sermon from the words, 
"Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that 



LIVING WITH INDIANS 



taketh a city/' was the direct means of setting 
him thinking about religious matters. He knew 
his faults, and he tried to mend them. 

This may be shown by another instance. Al- 
though he remained with the Cherokees, he left 
Oolooteka's roof and built a cabin on the west 
bank of the Neosho, or Grand, River, near where 
that river enters the Arkansas, almost across from 
the army post of Fort Gibson. He raised a few 
head of stock, farmed a little, and kept a small 
trader's store. He refused to sell liquor to the 
Indians, but to relieve the melancholy into which 
he now so often sank, he himself sometimes re- 
sorted to drink. We mention this because some 
writers have been inclined to enlarge upon it. 
This fault, also, he conquered, like the strong man 
he was. 

When the time came for him to go to Texas, 
to play the leading part in the great drama there 
unfolding, he was ready. He had been waiting 
for some task large enough to arouse his whole 
interest and claim his lagging energies. 



CHAPTER V 

An Excursion into History 

Before going with Houston to Texas, let us 
consider the exact condition of things there. 
Otherwise, the events in which he became so prom- 
inent may not be quite clear. It is a rather in- 
volved story at first, because Mexican politics 
have so much to do with it, and Mexican politics 
were, to say the least, very confused. We must 
therefore limit ourselves, so far as possible, to what 
is really necessary in order to follow the life-story 
of Sam Houston. By what he did in Texas he 
put his enemies to silence and took his place 
among the builders of states. 

Let us go back a little, and get a glimpse of the 
internal affairs of Mexico. In her rule of Mexico, 
Spain had been quite as unwise as she usually was 
in her other colonies; and finally, in 1810, the 
Mexican dislike of Spain, long smoldering, took 
fire. The struggle was not easy for the revolu- 

52 




.© by Clinedinst Studio. 



Statue of Houston in Statuary Hall of the Capitol, 
Washington 

The sculptor was Elizabet Ney, of Texas. This represents Houston 
as the artist supposed him to have looked in his youth. 



AN EXCURSION INTO HISTORY 53 



tionists, and it dragged on for several years. The 
popular leader, Agustin de Iturbide, happened, 
however, to be a man of good ability, and at last, 
in September, 182 1, he triumphantly entered 
Mexico City and the country was declared to be 
free. Spain did not recognize Mexican independ- 
ence until April 28, 1835, and in 1829 sent a feeble 
expedition to win back, if possible, what she had 
lost. The Mexicans, however, paid no attention 
to Spain, but proceeded to prove that they could 
govern themselves almost as badly as Spain had 
ever governed them. 

Iturbide should have set himself the task of 
developing a republic, for that of course had been 
the original object of the revolt. He seems to 
have wanted his country to prosper, but his ideas 
of prosperity were centered almost wholly in him- 
self. Unfortunately, most Mexican " patriots'' 
were like that. Aided by a part of the army he 
had led, Iturbide succeeded in having himself 
proclaimed the Most Serene Agustin I., Emperor 
of Mexico. This was rank usurpation of power, 
and nothing else, and there was distinct opposition 
to it. Iturbide brushed aside opposition, however, 
and the Mexican congress voted to confirm him in 
his title. He was more interested in mustering 



54 



SAM HOUSTON 



an idle pomp and ceremony for his " coronation" 
than he was in setting about the improvement of 
his country. 

We now come to a man whose name is more 
familiar to American readers, because he com- 
manded against Taylor and Scott in the Mexican 
War. Although he never won a battle against 
our troops, he was the best soldier in Mexico. 
From the age of fifteen he had been in the army, 
and in 1823 we find him Iturbide's right-ljand 
man. Then he headed an insurrection, the out- 
come of which was that in 1824 Agustin I. surren- 
dered his throne, a constitution patterned after that 
of the United States was adopted, and Guadalupe 
Victoria was duly elected president. Victoria's 
career as a Mexican president was rather out of 
the ordinary, for he served his full term in peace. 

He was followed by Manuel Gomez Pedraza, 
but hardly had Senor Pedraza taken his seat when 
along came another revolution; and congress, 
having annulled Pedraza's election altogether, 
handed over the office to Vicente Guerrero. Then 
it was that Santa Anna began to edge himself for- 
ward. The Spanish expedition of which we have 
spoken landed in Mexico, only to collapse very 
shortly and surrender to Santa Anna, who from 



AN EXCURSION INTO HISTORY 55 



that time was the " great man" of the Mexicans. 
Anastasio Bustamante overthrew Guerrero, but 
was himself overthrown by Santa Anna, and Santa 
Anna was elected president. 

His notion of being a constitutional president 
was, first, to nullify acts of congress that didn't 
suit him ; next, to forbid the old congress to meet ; 
then, to have a new congress elected under his 
own supervision. These were his first steps to 
centralize authority in his own hands, but by no 
means the last. Before long he was virtually 
dictator, and for upwards of forty years he was a 
man to be reckoned with in Mexico. He was a 
slight, dark little person, rather fastidious about 
his appearance, very Mexican in manners and 
tastes. In the way he managed to achieve his 
own ends among his countrymen, he showed a 
good deal of cunning. He was always immensely 
ambitious and vain, believing that he had a special 
destiny and often calling himself "The Napoleon 
of the West." Add a streak of almost savage 
cruelty, and we have a fair idea of Santa Anna. 
The object dearest to his heart was making himself 
emperor — a second and more splendid Iturbide. 
This he never quite achieved and at last he ceased 
to be a factor at all in Mexican affairs, dying ob- 



56 



SAM HOUSTON 



scurely so late as 1876. But before he finally 
dropped from power, he was to learn Sam Houston's 
quality as a soldier, and how Sam Houston could 
treat an enemy. 

We are not to think of the Mexican republic as 
ever a republic in the sense that the United States 
is. Not only was it continually upset by selfish mili- 
tary revolutions, but its public men had little or 
no respect for constitution or laws ; they conducted 
things in a way that Americans would have thought 
decidedly unbearable. 

Let us now glance at the history of Texas. It 
is small wonder that Texans have always shown 
an enthusiastic pride in their earlier annals. Those 
annals were crowded with heroic events — with 
great deeds by notable men. There is the un- 
flinching Austin, waiting at the doors of treacher- 
ous officials, or stifling in a dirty Mexican jail. 
There is the ever-glorious defense of the Alamo, 
where Texans defied death as coolly as any men 
have ever done, and to the last man fell fighting. 
There is the field of San Jacinto, where the tiny 
army that Houston had trained rushed forward to 
victory with " Remember the Alamo!" as its 
fierce battle cry. A story made up of such episodes 
as these will always fascinate us even if we read it 



AN EXCURSION INTO HISTORY 57 



as we might read any tale of patience and courage 
and splendid bravery. 

Our interest is deepened, however, as we realize 
what a significance this story had as a chapter in 
the larger story of the United States. When, 
after varying fortunes, Texas was annexed to this 
country, a territory was gained larger than France 
and England combined, and an independent nation 
was absorbed which might possibly have become 
an unfriendly neighbor. There is also plenty of 
good evidence to cause us to believe that if Texas 
had not been annexed to this country, some of the 
European nations would have thrust a finger into 
the pie and made us no end of trouble. Then, 
too, it was Texas that led to the Mexican War and 
the opening-up of the great Southwest, clear to the 
Pacific coast. 

A great many of these matters we cannot, in- 
deed, fully appreciate without going much more 
fully into the subject. But we can follow the 
plain story of what happened in Texas; and, as 
we go on, we shall see how Sam Houston was the 
one who made the freedom of Texas a reality; 
and the one who, more than any other, helped it 
to grow from small beginnings to be of real im- 
portance in the world. 



SAM HOUSTON 



Away back toward the end of the seventeenth 
century, that rather strange man, the Sieur de la 
Salle, founded a colony in southeastern Texas, near 
the mouth of the Colorado River. This gave his 
native land of France a claim to a wide region 
included in what was formerly called Louisiana 
— wide, but by no means clearly defined. Louisi- 
ana was ceded by France to Spain in 1763, ceded 
back again in 1801, and in 1803 bought from France 
by the United States. The treaty between France 
and this country provided that the inhabitants of 
Louisiana should be " incorporated in the Union of 
the United States.'' This did not, however, apply 
to Texas which continued, as it had been, under 
Spanish rule. When Mexico revolted against Spain, 
Texas took some share in the revolutionary move- 
ment. She sent a representative to the Mexican 
congress of 1824 ; but when the federal constitu- 
tion was adopted, it was found that she did not 
have a large enough population to qualify as an in- 
dependent state, so she was made a part of the 
state of Coahuila-Texas. It was pretty plainly 
hinted at that time that she would be allowed to 
set up housekeeping for herself later on. 

Two attempts were made by American presi- 
dents to negotiate with Mexico for the transfer 



AN EXCURSION INTO HISTORY 59 



of Texas — one by John Quincy Adams, the other 
and more persistent by Andrew Jackson. The 
Mexicans were rather alarmed at this and in 1830 
a decree was issued that was intended, so far as 
possible, to prevent any more American colonists 
from going into Texas. 

There were at that time other American settle- 
ments on Texas soil, but the future growth and 
welfare of the region depended on the colony 
founded by Stephen F. Austin. Austin was born 
in Virginia in 1793. His father, Moses Austin, 
came from Connecticut, and after tarrying in 
Virginia and Missouri, he started in 1820 for 
Texas, hoping there to change his run of ill luck. 
He rode on horseback all the way from what is 
now Washington County, Missouri, to San An- 
tonio de Bexar. There he petitioned the Spanish 
authorities for the right to establish in Texas a 
colony of immigrants that he proposed to bring 
from the United States. His petition was for- 
warded to the capital for approval, and then he 
started back on his thousand-mile ride. He had 
not gone far when he was set upon by his fellow- 
travelers, robbed, and left to shift for himself. 
He kept on, in bad weather, living on nothing but 
pecan nuts and acorns, until he reached the cabin 



6o 



SAM HOUSTON 



of a hospitable settler near the Sabine. After he 
finally arrived in Missouri he began preparations 
to remove to Texas, but the exposure and hard- 
ships he had suffered had so weakened him that 
he died after having received word that his peti- 
tion had been granted. 

His son Stephen then went to look over the 
country and pick out a suitable location, and he 
chose a tract between the lower reaches of the 
Colorado and Brazos rivers. It was without in- 
habitants other than stray Indians or wandering 
trappers. Austin's advertisements for settlers drew 
quite a number of persons. The grants of land 
were liberal, and the settlers were allowed to hold 
slaves. Austin sent a schooner laden with tools 
and supplies, while he and his settlers went over- 
land. The schooner made a landing at the mouth 
of the Brazos. Austin waited a long time at the ap- 
pointed place — the mouth of the Colorado. Then 
the settlers had to begin their work with such im- 
plements as they happened to have brought along. 
Meanwhile, Spanish rule in Mexico had come to an 
end, and Austin did not know whether his grant 
would be renewed or not. He set out for Mexico 
City, and his trip was an even more dangerous and 
difficult one than Moses Austin had made from 



AN EXCURSION INTO HISTORY 6l 



Missouri to San Antonio. Stephen Austin rode 1 200 
miles or more through a country that had been 
quite disorganized by a long revolution and in which 
law and order were no more than words. From 
Monterey to the capital he had but one comrade. 

Iturbide, the Most Serene Agustin L, renewed 
the grant, and Austin was about ready to go home 
when Santa Anna's revolt sent Agustin an exile 
to Leghorn, and there was the grant to be renewed 
for the second time. Austin once more was suc- 
cessful, but when in 1823 he returned to the colony 
after his long absence, he found that a number of 
the settlers had gone elsewhere and those who re- 
mained were discouraged. But nothing could dis- 
courage Austin. He soon was busy getting new 
settlers to join the enterprise, and by 1824 the out- 
look was hopeful. Had there been a wise and 
stable government in Mexico, all might have gone 
well. Certainly Austin gave his whole heart to the 
project, and through all the trials of those first pio- 
neer days he showed the fineness of his character. 

In devoting his life to this work, he had aban- 
doned a career that was full of promise. Born, 
like Houston, in Virginia, and in the same year, 
1793, he had been far better educated than Houston, 
being an alumnus of Transylvania University, at 



62 



SAM HOUSTON 



Lexington, Kentucky. At twenty he had been 
admitted to the bar, and at twenty-seven he was 
a district judge in Arkansas Territory. His pros- 
pects for ease and distinction were excellent, but he 
put them all aside to enter upon a kind of life to 
which he had not been accustomed, as Houston had. 

He founded his " capital" at San Felipe de 
Austin, on the Brazos. This is not to be confused 
with the present Austin, which is on the Colorado. 
Although it was quite within his power, as empre- 
sario (" grantee," or " contractor ") to act as a little 
dictator, he chose to do nothing of the sort. He 
established courts in which strict justice was dealt 
out to everybody. He organized a local " guard," 
or militia. He saw to it that a proper record was 
kept of all titles to land. He was the final author- 
ity in everything, but he ruled by sheer kindness 
and unassuming ability. As one loyal Texan has 
put it, "Men delighted to intrust him with their 
lives, their property, their fortunes." 

He had had no military training; he was not a 
ready speaker. When stormy times came, he 
deferred to Houston, and Houston, the newcomer, 
who knew how to stir men to action by his words 
and how to guide men to victory on the field, be- 
came the leader. 



CHAPTER VI 
A Fresh Enterprise 

Around Houston's departure for Mexico cer- 
tain writers have endeavored to throw an air of 
mystery. They hint at very good reasons for the 
belief that he went under secret orders from Jack- 
son to foment revolution against Mexico and 
finally obtain Texas for the United States. It 
may as well be said that such hints have no basis 
whatever. They are a repetition of gossip that, 
ever since 1832, has been passed along without any 
attempt to find facts to support it. If such a thing 
were true, it would constitute a serious charge 
against Jackson, and, to say the least, would lead 
us to think Sam Houston a hypocrite. 

When news came to Jackson, back in 1829, that 
Houston was planning a hair-brained invasion of 
Texas, he took no stock in the report but at the 
same time in a letter to Houston showed his dis- 
approval of the idea. "I must really have thought 

63 



6 4 



SAM HOUSTON 



you deranged," he wrote, "to have believed you 
had so wild a scheme in contemplation." So far 
as is known, Houston never, either then or later, 
planned anything of the sort. The possibilities 
in an expedition like that may have suggested 
themselves to Houston, as they had to Aaron 
Burr, and, no doubt, to others. This we can 
neither deny nor affirm. It is reasonably plain, 
however, that from 1829 to 1832 Houston was 
hardly in a position to direct such an enterprise. 
Furthermore, it is not at all probable that he 
would have embarrassed Jackson by anything so 
sure to bring hostile criticism upon the adminis- 
tration. 

Except to those bent on making it otherwise, 
Jackson's attitude is clear and frank enough. 
Writing to the United States minister in Mexico 
that a revolution in Texas was quite likely to 
occur, he said: "This our Govt will be charged 
with fomenting ; altho all our constitutional powers 
will be exercised to prevent." When the revolu- 
tion was under way, he told the envoy from Texas 
that the United States was pledged to strict 
neutrality and must observe it. Shortly before 
San Jacinto, Austin made an urgent appeal to 
Jackson for help ; but on the back of Austin's 



A FRESH ENTERPRISE 



65 



letter the President jotted this memorandum: 
"The writer does not reflect that we have a treaty 
with Mexico, and our national faith is pledged to 
support it." Jackson was usually blunt and to 
the point ; we have no reason for thinking he didn't 
mean what he said. He was no coward ; if he had 
aided in starting the revolution, it is fair to assume 
that at a crisis like San Jacinto he would have 
stood by it. 

What, then, of Houston? How did he behave 
after he arrived in Texas? He was a delegate to 
the convention that met at San Felipe, April i, 
1833, and became chairman of the committee to 
draft a state constitution. Had Mexico accepted 
that constitution, revolution would have been 
averted. When a provisional government was 
organized at San Felipe in November, 1835, he 
was a member of the committee that prepared a 
" Declaration of the People of Texas." Article 1 
of that Declaration stated that the Texans had 
"taken up arms in defense of their rights and 
liberties, which were threatened by the encroach- 
ments of military despots, and in defense of the 
Republican Principle of the Federal Constitution 
of Mexico of eighteen hundred and twenty-four." 
When the Mexican government issued a demand 



66 



SAM HOUSTON 



for the leaders of the war party, Houston was not 
mentioned. All the evidence we have goes to 
show that Houston was at first opposed to revolu- 
tion and supported it only when he saw it could 
not be avoided. This is getting ahead of our story, 
to be sure ; but it is best at the outset to dismiss 
the idle rumor that has been carried over from one 
book to another, and that would impugn without 
reason the good faith of both Jackson and Houston. 

Houston did go to Texas with a commission from 
President Jackson. That commission was to try 
to bring about the return of such Indians as had 
gone from the United States to Texas; and to 
arrange treaties with the Comanches and other 
tribes for the protection of border settlers and 
traders. Houston set out in December, 1832. 

While in Arkansas Territory he had met Elias 
Rector, United States marshal of the Territory 
and afterward governor of the State; and Albert 
Pike, who, in place of the nonsense attributed to 
Dan Emmett, wrote words for the tune of " Dixie" 
that are really stirring and appropriate but that 
nobody ever sings. There is a story told by Pike, 
and given by others in different versions, that 
Houston, when he was leaving Arkansas, rode for 
a day or two in Rector's company. Houston was 



A FRESH ENTERPRISE 



67 



mounted on a small, bob-tailed pony ; Rector, on 
a larger and better horse. When they were about 
to go their own ways, Houston proposed a trade, 
because, he said, a bob-tailed steed would have no 
defense against the flies that were such a pest in 
the region whither he was bound. Rector agreed 
and the two shifted their bridles and saddles. As 
Houston bade his friend good-by, he turned to the 
pony with words that General Pike said were some- 
thing like this : 

"Jack, my faithful old servant, you and I must 
part. We have been friends a long time and have 
been mutually beneficial to each other. You have 
been a good servant to me ; but, Jack, there comes 
a time in the life of every man when he and his 
friends must separate. Though you have served 
me long and faithfully, and we have been true 
friends, the time has now come when we must take 
final leave of each other. At such a time it is but 
just, my good old companion, that I should give 
expression to my feelings. You are a faithful 
pony. You are a hardy pony. You are a sure- 
footed pony. But cruel man has made you de- 
fenseless against the common enemy of your kind, 
the pesky flies. This is the hot season, and where 
I am going they are very thick. Against these 



68 



SAM HOUSTON 



pests Providence saw fit to give you defense, but 
man has taken it from you, and against them, 
without a tail, you are helpless. I must, therefore, 
with pain and anguish part from you." 

When Houston was ready to leave, Rector said : 
" Houston, I wish to give you something as a keep- 
sake before we separate, and I have nothing that 
will do for the gift except my razor. I never saw 
a better one. They say one ought not to give a 
friend an edged tool, as it might cut friendship, 
but this one will not cut your friendship and mine." 

Houston, Pike related, answered, as he took the 
razor, " Rector, I accept your gift, and, mark my 
words, if I have good luck, this razor will some- 
time shave the chin of the president of a republic." 

The latter part of this story will hardly bear 
close examination. Houston may have really 
spoken in that way, either in jest or expressing 
that belief in his future which we have seen in 
him before. After he reached Texas, he deter- 
mined to win fame by linking himself with the 
rise of a new country. Perhaps he had done so 
even before that. Whatever the truth may be, 
his prediction to Major Rector sounds rather like 
an invention. If true, it is one more contradiction 
of the idea that Houston went to Texas as a secret 



A FRESH ENTERPRISE 



69 



agent of Andrew Jackson to stir up a revolt that 
should end as quickly as possible by Texas being 
turned over to the United States. 

He rode along to Nacogdoches, and then to San 
Felipe, the capital or headquarters of Stephen 
Austin's colony; but Austin happened to be 
absent, so the two did not meet at that time. 
From San Felipe he journeyed to San Antonio de 
Bexar with Colonel James Bowie, who had come 
from Chatahoula parish in Louisiana on a filibus- 
tering raid into Texas, and had remained there. 
Bowie was already renowned for his exploits and 
hardihood. He died in a grim fashion that suited 
him well. At the defense of the Alamo he lay 
injured on a cot, but he kept on firing his pistols 
until the Mexicans shot him. It was he who in- 
vented that terribly cruel weapon, the bowie knife, 
the very sight of which, Davy Crockett said, was 
" enough to give a man of a squeamish stomach 
the cholic, especially before breakfast." With this 
Colonel Bowie, then, Houston rode westward, and 
at San Antonio Bowie introduced him to Ruiz, 
the Mexican commandant, and to Veramendi, 
Mexican vice-governor of Texas and Bowie's 
father-in-law. After such an introduction, Hous- 
ton was pleasantly received by the authorities, 



7o 



SAM HOUSTON 



who gave him permission to meet the Comanche 
chiefs. A council was held, at which Houston 
presented medals to the chiefs and arranged with 
them that they should send a delegation to Fort 
Gibson to talk with commissioners of the United 
States government. This arrangement would un- 
doubtedly have been carried out if the treacherous 
Mexican officials had not interfered after Houston 
had gone. They were not used to such frank 
diplomacy as Houston's, and presumably thought 
that the Americans were trying in this way to get 
an influence over the Texas Indians, or to make 
with them a treaty or compact unfavorable to 
Mexico. 

Houston, believing his mission thus far success- 
ful, took up his return journey over the same route ; 
going first to San Felipe, where he met Austin 
face to face, and then to Nacogdoches, whose 
citizens asked him to make that settlement his 
permanent home. Everybody in Nacogdoches 
was talking about a convention of all Texas that 
was to gather at San Felipe in the spring. As we 
know, any further colonization of Americans in 
Texas had been forbidden by law. The Americans 
in Texas didn't propose to have all future grants 
of land restricted to Mexicans only; and, besides, 



A FRESH ENTERPRISE 



7* 



they didn't wish to be yoked any longer to the 
Mexican state of Coahuila. So there was a buzz 
of excitement in little Nacogdoches, and a sense of 
something about to happen, as Houston rode out 
from it to cross the Sabine. He went to Nachi- 
toches, in Louisiana, where he prepared his formal 
report for the War Department. In some two 
months he had traveled more than a thousand 
miles, and during that time he had made up his 
mind to throw in his fortunes with the Texans. 
He was soon back in Nacogdoches, where he was 
made heartily welcome, and, although not an "old 
settler," he was chosen a delegate to the approach- 
ing convention. 



CHAPTER VII 



Texas and the Texans 

Houston was now a full-fledged Texan. Among 
what sort of people had he come ? What was the 
country like ? 

Well, to begin with, the country was not yet 
greatly different in many respects from what it 
had been before Europeans came across the seas. 
Wonderful resources were there in coal, iron, oil, 
timber, and various minerals; but they were still 
unheeded. Rich alluvial soil was there, waiting 
for the plow, but the plowboy's song was not yet 
heard. Not more than seven or eight thousand 
bales of cotton went out of the whole region. 
There were no great fields of waving grain. The 
little cereal that was raised was wholly for house- 
hold use. Men burned away the undergrowth 
and then went over the blackened fields, dropping 
their maize in holes made with a sharp stick. 

72 



TEXAS AND THE TEXANS 73 



Drovers rounded up the mustangs for the mar- 
kets at San Antonio or over the line in Louisiana. 
A few white trappers hunted for skins and furs; 
and it was risky work among Indians that were 
often hostile. Stray traders exchanged trinkets 
and ammunition for such peltries as they could 
get from the Indians. Colonists were clearing away 
the canebrakes, or chopping down the trees, mak- 
ing ready for the harvests that they hoped were to 
be. Or they were building rude cabins, or guard- 
ing their few head of stock. Seed corn was very 
dear. In the beginning of Austin's colony around 
San Felipe, the settlers depended a good deal on 
wild game for their food ; and when drought made 
the bear and deer scarce, they sometimes had to 
eat the flesh of the wild ponies. 

Among the wild animals common in Texas 
then, were pronghorns, leopards, bears, panthers; 
the black fox, deer, raccoon, otter, and beaver. 
Occasionally bison wandered in. Flocks of wild 
geese and duck swept across the sky. Trumpeter 
and whistling swans sometimes arrived in crowds. 
Wild turkeys abounded. 

In 183 1 a visitor, writing from Bolivar, about 
sixty miles by water up the Brazos, said: "Our 
neighbor at one hunt brought in three bears, a 



74 



SAM HOUSTON 



Mexican hog, a rabbit, and two bee trees [meaning, 
presumably, honey from two bee trees]. Our 
carpenter, without leaving his bench five minutes, 
killed several wild ducks, the finest I ever tasted." 

The few small towns were squalid and unkempt. 
They had not developed much since the Spaniards 
founded them, or since the monks had built the 
quaint, castle-like missions, which were the only 
important structures across all those plains, and 
whose picturesque ruins keep green, as no other 
monuments do, the memory of those days of ad- 
venture. Even a dozen years later an English 
lady wrote Comfort, at least domestic 

household comfort, is quite unknown in this 
country. . . . Carpets, well-made beds, and all 
such necessaries of life, are unknown or despised." 
She goes on to tell an amusing story of how the 
French charge d'affaires, on a visit to an inland 
settlement, was shown at night to an apartment 
whose walls let in the prairie winds and through 
whose roof he could see the bright stars. This 
seemed poor accommodation, indeed, to this agent 
of a great civilized power; but, weary from his 
journey, he was just dropping to sleep when in 
strode a huge Kentuckian, armed with full equip- 
ment of pistols and bowie knife, who remarked 



TEXAS AND THE TEXANS 75 



in the most matter-of-fact way, "Well, stranger, 
I guess I'll take the inside of the bed, if it's the same 
to you?" It appears that the official, however, 
preferred the floor to having a burly newcomer in- 
terposed between his person and the wall. Doubt- 
less the Kentuckian had been familiar with many 
worse quarters than this, and thought the whole 
affair quite a joke. 

In the farming or ranching sections, the house 
generally consisted of a sort of double cabin — 
one apartment for sleeping, one for eating, with a 
space between, uninclosed on the sides, where the 
owner kept his saddles and tools and where in 
warm weather he took his meals. Usually separate 
from the main house were the kitchen and the 
smokehouse, where meat was smoked and kept. 

Judged by the standards of London or Paris, 
Texas must have seemed a wild spot. Foreign 
travelers there failed to understand, as they did 
even in the United States, that a new civilization 
was just in its beginnings, and that everything 
could not be done in a day. Besides, Texas was 
then poor. The Spaniards had done little for it, 
the Mexicans nothing at all. The Mexicans had 
ceased to maintain even the old military posts 
that the Spaniards had established. The Indians 



7 6 



SAM HOUSTON 



did very much as they pleased. In the later years 
of Spanish rule, when Spain was busy with internal 
troubles in Mexico, the Comanches and Apaches, 
who roamed the western marches, came to have 
no respect for the white man's rule. The Co- 
manches would even go so far as to ride into San 
Antonio de Bexar, dismount in the plaza or square, 
and leave their horses to be caught and fed by the 
terrified soldiers of the little garrison. These 
Indians despised the half-breed Mexicans and 
acted accordingly. 

For years border roughs had wandered from 
Louisiana into northeastern Texas, making a 
business of robbing traders and wayfarers. For 
years, too, pirates and filibusters had operated 
along the coast. Most notorious of these was 
Jean Lafitte, who is said to have claimed that a 
Spanish sea captain once ill-treated him and that 
he therefore declared war to the death against 
Spain. Lafitte declined a captaincy in Great 
Britain's navy, fought with Jackson's army at 
New Orleans, and in 1817 started a kind of pirates' 
paradise on Galveston Island. Leader of several 
hundred men, he preyed on the commerce not only 
of Spain but of the United States, until in 182 1 the 
government at Washington sent an expedition to 



TEXAS AND THE TEXANS 77 



oust him. He submitted in a most tame and un- 
piratical fashion ; and on the very site of his town 
of Campeachy the present city of Galveston after- 
wards grew up. 

Although at the time of Houston's coming, 
Texas had not yet made great material progress, 
the foundations had been laid for a new order of 
things. Austin and his colony had brought into 
that chaos a spirit that the Mexicans were be- 
ginning to fear. The struggle that was to follow 
was at the bottom a clash between two very dif- 
ferent types of society. In 1830, Alaman, the 
Mexican secretary of foreign and internal relations, 
sent to the Mexican congress a message that led 
to the national decree by which all American 
colonizing in Texas was practically forbidden. 
Alaman denounced the Americans and their 
methods, saying that they came in under a pre- 
tense of colonizing but were really trying to get 
control, raise a disturbance, and finally take the 
region for themselves. Mexico went to work to 
combat the new influence in a blundering and 
mistaken way. General Teran was sent to en- 
force the decree. Garrisons composed very largely 
of convicts were established. A number of new 
immigrants were expelled. From that decree of 



78 



SAM HOUSTON 



1830 and its clumsy enforcement, we may date the 
feeling of resentment and ill-will that was to lead 
to the Texas revolution of 1836. 

The other contractors who had obtained grants 
of land did not bring in many settlers. Austin's 
colony led in spreading the American spirit, and 
gradually that spirit dominated the whole anti- 
Mexican movement. His colonists scattered 
widely, from the old San Antonio road to the sea- 
coast and from the San Jacinto River to the 
Lavaca. Most of these men wanted elbow room. 
They were like the old Tennessee planter that an 
early writer on Texas tells about. 

"Mr. C — , the gentleman in question, had re- 
moved from his own State to Red River, and after 
a few years' absence, a friend left Tennessee for 
the purpose of paying him a visit. Arrived at 
Red River, he found that Mr. C — had relinquished 
his abode there for a settlement at Nacogdoches. 
Proceeding to Nacogdoches, he was shown his 
vacant location, and was instructed to seek him 
at a plantation on the Brazos. Having traveled 
to the Brazos, he was told that the Squire was no 
longer there, but located at C — 's Creek on the 
Colorado. Here at last he met the object of his 
search, to all appearances very snugly settled. 



TEXAS AND THE TEXANS 79 



The visitor having expressed his gratification at 
finding his old friend after a long search, so pleas- 
antly fixed, — 'Ah,' said Mr. C — , 'I must move 
again, they begin to crowd me, I can't go out with 
the rifle ! ' — The settlements on the Colorado 
were then few and far between and Mr. C — was 
in his 85th year." He was of the type of Crockett 
and Boone — men who felt " crowded" w T hen they 
could see the smoke from another man's chimney. 

Most of the American settlers in Texas were 
people to be proud of — pioneers in the true sense, 
the same kind of folk that drove their great covered 
wagons by hard and dangerous trails to the new 
regions of our distant West. If there was any 
difference, it was that the Texas pioneers were 
"in certain ways peculiar and notable." A student 
of the Foreign Office papers in the Public Record 
Office at London quotes these words from a memoir 
sent by General Wavell, an Englishman in the 
Mexican service, for the information of the British 
government: "To as much if not more natural 
Talent, and energy to call it into play, and knowl- 
edge of all which is practically useful under every 
Emergency of the most Civilized Nations, they 
[the Texas people] add a reckless hardihood, a 
restless Spirit of Adventure, resources and con- 



8o 



SAM HOUSTON 



fidence in themselves, keen perception, coolness, 
contempt of other men, usages, and Laws, and of 
Death, equal to the Wild Indian." The officer 
who wrote this shows a certain contempt for the 
laws of English style and capitalization; but the 
description he sent, although it was written some 
years after Texan independence was gained, may 
be taken as about as good as any that could be 
given in equal space. 

These Texans were hardy and independent, 
essentially law-abiding, but not likely to pay much 
heed to laws which they considered unjust. They 
had come into this new country because they had 
heard the soil was fertile and easily tilled, and the 
climate healthful and pleasant. The greater num- 
ber were from the southern states of the Union. 
As they intended to cultivate and develop the rich 
farm lands, and as they were used to the insti- 
tution of slavery, many of them took negro slaves 
along with them, so that at the beginning of 
the revolution, there were probably about a 
thousand slaves held by Americans in Texas. 
The owners did not see how they could get along 
without the help of slaves in working the land and 
making it profitable on a large scale. The Mexi- 
cans did not keep negro slaves, as they had found 



TEXAS AND THE TEXANS 81 



what was called the "peonage" system more 
profitable. Under this system the Indians of 
Mexico were held in what was virtually bondage, 
their lot being really much worse than that of 
negro slaves had ever been under the better class 
of owners in the southern United States. 

Besides these planter-settlers, there were some 
who had gone to Texas because of financial troubles 
due rather to bad luck or imprudence than to dis- 
honesty; others who were fugitives from justice 
but whose crimes had been committed hastily 
rather than from any essentially wrong intent; 
and still others — a minority — whom we must 
classify as desperate characters. Austin took 
pains to show any desperadoes that they were not 
wanted in his colony. He expelled them if he 
thought they ought to be expelled, and sometimes 
they were chastised pretty severely if, in his judg- 
ment, that had to be done. But, as a whole, the 
Americans in Texas were a stout-hearted, self- 
reliant set of people. In Austin's colony self- 
government was early in force, and popular elec- 
tions and freedom of speech were the rule. 

There were able men in Texas besides Austin 
and Houston — men like Dr. Branch T. Archer, 
from Virginia ; the brothers John A. and William 

G 



82 



SAM HOUSTON 



H. Wharton, from Tennessee ; Henry Smith, from 
Kentucky; David G. Burnet, from New Jersey; 
Anson Jones, from Massachusetts; and Thomas 
J. Rusk, from South Carolina. Such men were 
well qualified to organize a successful resistance 
to Mexico ; and when independence had been won, 
they could give Texas, though not yet materially 
a prosperous state, a certain dignity and char- 
acter before the world. Sam Houston, however, 
was needed to manage affairs — to focus and di- 
rect the movement for independence after it had 
begun. 

The Mexican government did nothing to pro- 
tect the settlers from rascals and marauders, but 
the settlers protected themselves. The Indians 
had fallen into a way of driving off cattle, horses, 
or mules from herds belonging to Mexican half- 
breeds. When they tried this with the Ameri- 
cans, they soon found it unwise. We have a pic- 
ture of the adventurous Texans as they sallied 
forth on their punitive expeditions against Indian 
thieves : 

"Mounted on a favorite horse, armed with the 
trusty rifle, and accompanied by their dogs, they 
can explore their way through the woods by the 
sun and the bark of the trees. Clad in their usual 



TEXAS AND THE TEXANS 83 



homely dress, an otter skin cunningly folded and 
sewed is the depository of tobacco, ammunition, 
and means for kindling a fire; a wallet slung be- 
hind the saddle contains sustenance for man and 
horse." 

It was from such material as this, needing only 
discipline to make it effective, that Houston de- 
veloped the courageous little army that won at 
San Jacinto. 

Yet these same men who could be quick on the 
trigger and stern toward their enemies, were kindly 
and hospitable to a fault. In later days, when 
things were less primitive and folk had come in 
who were more reserved and " stand-offish/ ' an 
old traveler said that when he was looking for a 
house where he might pass the night, he would 
ask, "How long have you been in this country ?" 
If the answer was, "I disremember how long," or 
to the effect that the host had been there a num- 
ber of years, the traveler would dismount from 
his weary horse, sure of a simple, hearty welcome 
and the best meal the house afforded — bacon and 
eggs, perhaps, or venison, with freshly made 
maize-cakes and hot coffee. Hospitality, the 
boast of the Old South, was equally characteristic 
of Young Texas. 



8 4 



SAM HOUSTON 



This is a rough sketch of the country to which 
Sam Houston had come, and of the people whom 
the poet has called "the glory of the race of 
rangers." But events were now crowding upon 
each other in Texas, and we must follow them. 



CHAPTER VIII 
Beginnings of Revolt 

When General Teran appeared, with his convict 
soldiers, the Texans began to feel that there was 
trouble ahead. Austin had a strong sense of his 
obligations to the Mexican government. He tried 
his best to hold the Texans to a conservative policy. 
The settlers on their part had the greatest con- 
fidence in him, but they began to break away from 
his policy. At the same time it was Austin's in- 
fluence that kept the early stages of the revolu- 
tion on a higher plane than might otherwise have 
been the case. * 

A space of six years had been allowed during 
which supplies for Austin's colony could be brought 
in free of any customs duty. As soon as that 
period was up, the Mexicans closed all the sea- 
ports except Anahuac, on Galveston Bay. It was 
important that tact should be used in beginning 
to collect duties from people who were not used to 

8s 



So 



SAM HOUSTON 



paying any. Tact, however, had no place in 
Mexican procedure. Teran put in command of 
Anahuac one John D. Bradburn. a heavy-handed, 
violent Kentuckian who had gone into Mexico 
on a rdibustering expedition ana remained there 
looking for anything that might come his way. 
It may be imagined that the Texans didn't have 
a very high opinion of an .American who. under 
such circumstances, was willing to command a 
force of Mexican convicts. Bradburn put thirty 
miles of coast under martial law. and then arrested 
and imprisoned several prominent colonists for 
alleged insubordination. One of them was William 
B. Travis, who was to win glory for himself as 
leader of the defense of the Alamo. At this the 
less conservative element among the settlers got 
the upper hand and started in to act. 

A body of men marched against Anahuac. It 
was decided that they must have cannon, and a 
schooner sailed with them from Brazoria, a little 
town on the Brazos River. The Mexican com- 
mandant at Velasco. at the mouth of the river, 
would not allow the schooner to pass, so the 
colonists attacked and captured the place with 
severe loss to the defenders. When it came to 
marksmanship, the army of Mexico was not in the 



BEGINNINGS OF REVOLT 87 



same class with these Americans, nearly every one 
of whom had been trained in the school of the 
frontier. This was really the first blood shed 
in the Texas revolution, and the date was June 27, 
1832. 

No further operations were carried on just then, 
for the Mexicans removed Bradburn, who got out 
of the country in disguise, and released the Ameri- 
cans who had been imprisoned. The Mexican 
troops at Anahuac decided to leave that post and 
join the army of Santa Anna, who had started his 
revolution against President Bustamante and who 
was rapidly gaining ground against the Busta- 
mante party. Other garrisons did likewise, until 
only that at Nacogdoches was left. There were 
three hundred and fifty men there in the Old Stone 
Fort. Compelled by the colonists to retire from 
the town, they, too, declared for Santa Anna and 
handed over their commander to the Texans. 
The more liberal Mexicans were hoping for greater 
things from Santa Anna. The colonists also took 
his side and drew up resolutions supporting him. 
Possibly they did this to justify themselves for 
having taken matters into their own hands — a 
step that was due rather to resentment against 
Mexican methods in general than to any special 



88 



SAM HOUSTON 



liking for either of the national parties. Still, 
Santa Anna was talking a good deal about up- 
holding the constitution and the laws, and Busta- 
mante had certainly been a tyrant. At any rate, 
many of the colonists were at this time loud in 
their praise of a man against whom they were 
fighting four years later. 

There was a kind of minor convention of the 
Texan people at San Felipe de Austin in October, 
1832. Petitions were adopted to be sent to the 
state and national governments, but the only sub- 
stantial result was the appointment of a central 
committee of safety at San Felipe. This com- 
mittee w r as given power to call another convention. 
While Santa Anna was fighting and scheming his 
way to the presidency down in Mexico, the Texans, 
beside their winter fires, were earnestly discussing 
everything ; the radicals among them were winning 
over those who were reluctant, and the whole 
country was in a ferment. 

Sam Houston grasped the situation with his 
usual insight — an insight that has led one writer 
to remark that " Probably nothing in ordinary 
human nature escaped his observation." In a 
letter which he wrote from Natchitoches, Louisi- 
ana,_to President Jackson in February, 1833, he 



BEGINNINGS OF REVOLT 89 



said: "Mexico is involved in civil war. The 
Federal Constitution has never been in operation. 
The Government is essentially despotic, and must 
be so for years to come. The rulers have not 
honesty, and the people have not intelligence. 
The people of Texas are determined to form a 
state government, and separate from Coahuila, 
and unless Mexico is soon restored to order, and 
the Constitution revived and reenacted, the 
province of Texas will remain separate from the 
Confederacy of Mexico. ... I have traveled 
nearly five hundred miles across Texas, and am 
now enabled to judge pretty correctly of the soil 
and resources of the country, and I have no hesi- 
tation in pronouncing it the finest country, for its 
extent, upon the globe; for the greater portion 
of it is richer and more healthy than West Ten- 
nessee. . . . My opinion is that Texas, by her 
members in Convention, will, by the 1st of April, 
declare all that country as Texas proper, and form 
a State Constitution." 

This letter also refers to Jackson's attempts to 
purchase Texas from Mexico, suggests that the 
Texans themselves will soon be in a position to 
arrange for the transfer of the country "on fair 
terms," and declares that public opinion will not 



9 o 



SAM HOUSTON 



sanction such a transfer to any country except to 
the United States. It is rather difficult to see how 
any one could make this letter agree with the theory 
that Houston was acting as a secret agent for 
Jackson with the purpose to get Texas for nothing 
by means of a revolution partly engineered from 
Washington. 

The convention of the people of Texas did meet 
on April i at San Felipe, and Houston was there 
as a delegate from Nacogdoches. William H. 
Wharton was elected president, and Houston was 
chairman of the committee to draft a constitution 
to be submitted for approval by the Mexican 
government. Austin and two others were ap- 
pointed commissioners to present this constitu- 
tion, but Austin went alone. He was not alto- 
gether in sympathy with the aggressive ideas of 
the convention, but he bowed to the wishes of the 
majority, and went to Mexico at his own expense. 
An epidemic of cholera w r as then running its course 
in the City of Mexico, but Austin remained there 
for six unsatisfactory months. Then, in December, 
he left without having obtained anything definite 
from the authorities. He had traveled as far as 
Saltillo, in Coahuila, when he was arrested and 
sent back. 




© by Clinedinst Studio. 



Statue of Austin in Statuary Hall 
of the Capitol, Washington 

This statue is the work of Elizabet Ney. It 
represents the sculptor's idea of Austin at 
the time he established his colony. 



BEGINNINGS OF REVOLT 91 

It seems that Gomez Farias, the vice president, 
who was acting as president at the time, had found 
out that Austin had written a letter to the people 
of Bexar, the western department of Texas, asking 
them to help in the movement for a better govern- 
ment. For a year and a hah Austin was kept a 
prisoner, a large part of the time in solitary con- 
finement. He was the most conservative of the 
Texans, yet he suffered more than any one else at 
the hands of the Mexican government. Small 
wonder that in the journal which he kept while in 
prison he wrote this sentence: " Philanthropy is 
but another name for trouble." 

During this time Santa Anna held a council, at 
which Austin, while still a prisoner, was present, 
to deliberate regarding Texas affairs. It was 
decided that Texas would have to remain a part 
of the compound state of Coahuila and Texas, 
and that four thousand troops would have to be 
ordered to Bexar. After listening to Austin, how- 
ever, Santa Anna promised to repeal that article 
of the national decree of 1830 by which any further 
colonizing from the United States was forbidden. 
That is to say, he promised to do so unless he later 
thought of reasons why he shouldn't. 

At last, in 1835, Austin was freed and told he 



9 2 



SAM HOUSTON 



might go home. His two journeys to Mexico, 
the first in 1822-23, the second in 1833-35, had 
been far from agreeable. They had imposed upon 
him hardships that probably helped to shorten 
his life, for he died at forty-three. His sojourns 
at the capital must have shown him how thoroughly 
unfit the Mexican government was to govern any- 
thing. Yet this remarkable man was hopeful. He 
told the British minister that the Texans would 
insist that settlers who had come in since the 
decree of 1830 should have their titles to land 
respected, and that no more Mexican troops would 
be allowed to remain on Texan soil. But as for 
" independence" — why, the Texans weren't striv- 
ing for that. 

Strictly speaking, of course, he was quite right. 
Other Texans had said, and were saying, prac- 
tically that very thing. More than that, the con- 
vention of 1833, by a vote of more than two to one, 
had declared for the federal constitution of 1824. 
This was the constitution that had been pro- 
claimed as a result of the military revolution 
against Iturbide, led by that clever young officer 
Antonio de Santa Anna. The wheel had revolved 
a few times, and Santa Anna had so utterly turned 
his back on constitutions that he was now en- 



BEGINNINGS OF REVOLT 93 



grossed in making himself Grand Mogul. Men 
like the Texans, who believed in universal suffrage, 
trial by jury, freedom of the press, and kindred 
rights, were bound to come into conflict with 
Santa Anna or any other despot. Unconsciously, 
in spite of themselves, independence was the goal 
toward which they were headed. In that respect, 
at least, the revolution in Texas was quite like the 
American Revolution: its momentum, when it 
was under way, carried it farther than most men 
had bargained for. As his letter to Jackson has 
shown us, Sam Houston saw more clearly than 
men who had been in Texas a good deal longer. 

In January, 1835, the Mexicans again took steps 
for the collection of customs duties in Texas, and 
a Captain Tenorio was sent with a little force of 
men to aid the customs officer at Anahuac in his 
labors. Then word arrived that the arbitrary 
Santa Anna had dissolved the state government 
in Coahuila and put in a creature of his own as 
governor. This was more than the war party in 
Texas thought Texans ought to stand. It didn't 
look to them very much like getting back to the 
constitution of 1824, or like the sort of thing that 
ought longer to be tolerated among freemen. So 
the war party, ignoring for the time being the 



94 



SAM HOUSTON 



conservatives and those who didn't think the time 
yet ripe for interference, sent a band of men to 
Anahuac under command of young Travis. Travis 
soon had Tenorio out of Anahuac and on the road 
to Bexar. The next move of the Mexicans was to 
send a man named Thompson — there were men 
of all sorts of nationalities and names looking for 
fame and fortune in Mexico — up to Anahuac 
with a schooner. This Thompson, with his little 
schooner, the Correo, took it into his head to 
capture a United States trading vessel somewhere 
near the coast. The Texans thereupon seized the 
Correo and took it to New Orleans, where they 
turned over the inglorious Thompson to the 
authorities to be tried on the charge of piracy. 

Volunteers now began to organize for defense. 
Every man had his own rifle and knew how to 
use it. That was the essential part of their outfit. 
As to the rest of it, they were a motley crowd of 
citizen-soldiers, each man garbed as pleased him 
best, with nothing uniform about them save the 
determination to do their part in the war which all 
felt to be very close at hand. It remained for 
Sam Houston to take his place as their commander. 



CHAPTER IX 



Sam Houston as Leader 

Houston was biding his time. In fact, he was 
biding it so quietly that it has been supposed he 
left Texas not long after the convention of 1833. 
By the fall of 1835, however, he was certainly 
again in Nacogdoches. 

Austin's return from Mexico was celebrated, 
amid much rejoicing, by a public dinner at Brazoria. 
Austin spoke at this dinner, and although he was 
calm, as always, yet he was positive, too, in de- 
claring that Texas must have her constitutional 
rights. He also said that he was in favor of a 
"consultation;"' which was simply a name for 
another general convention, at which Texans were 
to decide upon some kind of definite action for the 
future. But very definite action was taken with- 
out waiting for any consultation or convention. 

On the straight highway from San Felipe de 
Austin to Bexar, right where that road crossed the 

95 



9 6 



SAM HOUSTON 



river Guadalupe, was the town of Gonzales — 
quite a flourishing little place, in the midst of far- 
rolling prairie. This town of Gonzales had a 
cannon, a little four- or six-pounder which had 
been supplied to it in 183 1 to overawe the Indians. 
Colonel Ugartechea demanded that this small 
fieldpiece be given up. Ugartechea was in com- 
mand of the Mexican troops at Bexar, and the 
Texans had had to do with him before; for it was 
he who had surrendered Velasco in 1832. His 
demand met with a "no," so he sent a detachment 
of about one hundred men, led by a subordinate, 
to take the cannon by force. 

Gonzales was on the east bank of the Guadalupe, 
and the Mexican troops were coming from the west. 
The townspeople, therefore, in order to gain time 
until a force of volunteers could be got together 
from the surrounding country to help them, re- 
moved the ferryboat. The Mexicans then fell 
back to a point a few miles from the river ; but 
the Texans crossed the stream, marched after them, 
and scattered them in a brief encounter in which 
the little cannon did its busy share. Gonzales 
had suffered no harm for that time, but it was 
later to do so, as we shall see in the course of our 
martial story. 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER 97 



There was now a burst of energy on the part 
of the Texans. Goliad, one of the oldest of Texas 
towns, on the north bank of the San Antonio River 
some eighty-five miles southeast of San Antonio, 
was easily surprised and taken by less than fifty 
men, and with the town were captured arms and 
money, both much needed by the revolutionists. 
From Goliad went about forty men who took a 
post of perhaps as many houses, called by the 
Aztec name of Lipantitlan, on the southwest 
bank of the Nueces River, some four miles above 
the Irish settlement of San Patricio. Even Austin, 
who had long before been given the rank of lieu- 
tenant colonel by the Mexicans, and was often 
called Colonel Austin, now turned military, and 
marched away from Gonzales at the head of three 
hundred and fifty volunteers bound for the capture 
of Bexar. Bexar had just been occupied by Gen- 
eral Martin Perfecto de Cos with five hundred 
fresh troops, so that the siege, if we may call it 
such, took longer than it otherwise would have 
done. 

Bexar, or San Antonio de Bexar (now called 
simply San Antonio, and the county seat of Bexar 
county), dated from 1718. The better sort of 
houses were of the Spanish-Mexican type, built 

H 



9§ 



SAM HOUSTON 



of a kind of freestone, but one story in height, with 
flat roofs around which ran low parapets. In the 
center of the town was the ancient church of San 
Fernando (begun in 1734), upon which General 
Cos had at this time built a platform where artillery 
was planted. The streets ran at right angles to 
the church, on either side of which were plazas 
or squares, and through the place meandered the 
San Antonio River and its tributary the San Pedro. 
Irrigation of the surrounding lands had been suc- 
cessfully tried, and a region of rich agriculture 
might have been developed; but with the going 
of the Spanish had gone, too, whatever of enter- 
prise there had been. The population was about 
2500, nearly all Mexican. A few families sought 
to maintain a little of the old Spanish social life. 

East of the San Antonio River, looking west- 
ward across a small plaza, was an oblong, walled 
inclosure, with a group of dismantled, half -ruined 
buildings. This was what remained of the Mission 
San Antonio de Valero, from which the friars had 
long since withdrawn to Mexico. The chapel of 
this Mission was to become famous as the Alamo. 
Alamo is the Spanish word for cottonwood; and 
as there were numerous cottonwood trees near the 
building, it has generally been supposed that this 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER 99 



was the explanation of the name. The business 
of a modern city now goes noisily on around that 
historic structure; but in 1835 it stood quite 
detached from the town, with only a few w r retched 
jacales, or Mexican huts, near by. 

The Texans were nearly two months in getting 
into Bexar. On October 28 some hundred men, 
under Captain James W. Fannin and Colonel 
James Bowie (he of the bowie knife), badly de- 
feated a much larger number of Mexicans at 
Mission Concepcion, about a mile and a half below 
the town. Again the Texans proved their marks- 
manship with the rifle. 

Early in October Houston had been elected com- 
mander in chief for eastern Texas, by which was 
meant, in a rough way, the country of which 
Nacogdoches was the center. From Gonzales, 
Austin had sent out a general hurry call for troops, 
and this call came to Houston while at San Au- 
gustine, east of Nacogdoches on the old San Antonio 
road. The story is that, taking from his pocket 
his last five dollars, he gave them to a good rider 
with word to summon east Texas to arms. Houston 
soon joined Austin in camp before San Antonio 
de Bexar. 

Austin at once urged Houston to take supreme 



IOO 



SAM HOUSTON 



command. Houston declined. He offered to aid 
Austin in drilling and organizing, but pointed out 
that the troops at Gonzales, before marching on 
Bexar, had chosen Austin as their leader, and that 
such a change might cause complaint among the 
rank and file and interfere with the blockade. A 
council of war was held to consider whether it 
would be wise to attempt to take Bexar by storm, 
but as Cos had well fortified himself and as the 
Texans had no suitable artillery, it was decided 
that such an attempt ought not to be made. 

Meanwhile, the " consultation" or convention 
had gone into session at San Felipe. It appointed 
Austin one of three commissioners, the other two 
being Branch T. Archer and William H. Wharton, 
to visit the United States. Houston, who was a 
delegate, left for San Felipe, and Colonel Edward 
Burleson, an Indian fighter of some repute, took 
Austin's place as commander of the Texan forces in 
the field. 

Burleson did not accomplish much. The au- 
tumn wore away. One company came from 
Mississippi to join the Texans, and two from New 
Orleans, but nothing of any consequence was 
done. Desertions from the ranks were almost 
constant. It was no easy task to keep a crowd 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER ioi 



of free-and-easy frontiersmen interested in so in- 
active and uninspiring a siege. It looked as if 
they were going to break up in disorder and return 
home. 

There was a Colonel Benjamin R. Milam, 
known through Texas as "old Ben Milam," who 
was determined to prevent such a fiasco. Milam 
had been imprisoned at Monterey as one of the 
leaders of the Texas war party, but he had escaped 
and joined the forces before Bexar. A Mexican 
deserter had brought word of the real weakness of 
the defenses and the discouraged mood of the 
garrison — most of whom w r ere convicts and none 
too enthusiastic to begin with. Thinking this to 
be a most opportune moment, Milam gained 
Burleson's authority to call for volunteers, and, 
waving his hat, shouted out, "Who will go with 
old Ben Milam?" 

Everything was now animated and astir. On 
the morning of December 5, the Texans entered 
the town without any sharp opposition — thus 
proving the truth of what the deserter had said. 
They made their way along from street to street, 
from house to house, shooting from loopholes 
and windows, picking off every Mexican who 
ventured above the barricades. On the evening 



102 



SAM HOUSTON 



of that day, Milam, as he stood in the entrance 
of Veramendi Palace, the official residence of 
Colonel Bowie's father-in-law, was shot down by 
a sharpshooter concealed in a cypress tree. There 
is a monument to him in Milam Square in the 
modern city of San Antonio. 

This "sniping" kind of warfare went on until the 
9th, when Cos began negotiations for surrender. 
On the nth was signed the capitulation, by the 
terms of which Cos and his officers gave their 
parole of honor not to oppose any further the 
Texan movement to reestablish the constitution 
of 1824; the convict soldiers were to be escorted 
beyond the Rio Grande ; and the regular Mexican 
soldiers were allowed to remain in Texas if they 
chose. Cos marched away on December 14, to 
violate his parole within a year. North of the 
Rio Grande there was not now a Mexican soldier 
bearing arms against the little company of Texans. 
The Mexican loss at Bexar was perhaps one hun- 
dred and fifty. That of the Texans was twenty- 
six wounded and two killed, of whom "old Ben 
Milam" was one. 

Sam Houston took no prominent part in the 
capture of San Antonio, yet San Antonio re- 
members him in at least two ways. A mile north 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER 



of the city is Fort Sam Houston, headquarters 
of the southern department of the United States 
army. And when each April comes round, the 
townsfolk of San Antonio celebrate Sam Houston's 
victory at San Jacinto with a bloodless carnival 
known as the " Battle of the Flowers." 

After the capture of San Ajitonio the Texans 
did a very queer thing. With the exception of a 
small force left to hold the Alamo, they simply 
disbanded and went home for Christmas. Their 
most exposed frontier was left unwatched, and 
in all that country were only the little garrisons at 
San Antonio and Goliad. This was strange; and 
it was to prove disastrous. The Texans were 
brave enough, but among them all it would seem 
there was only one real military leader. If they 
imagined that it was not necessary to maintain, 
increase, and improve the army in the field, Sam 
Houston had no such sadly impractical notion. 
He realized, if they did not, that the war for inde- 
pendence was not yet over. It must be said frankly 
that one cannot admire the way in which the 
Texans confused and mismanaged their affairs 
during this important winter. Sam Houston's task 
was made all the harder — his final achievement 
became the more splendid. 



104 



SAM HOUSTON 



We must not overlook the fact that there were 
many Mexican "liberals" who were disgusted with 
Santa Anna. One of them, General Mejia, went 
to New Orleans, which has always been a haunt 
of Spanish- American refugees and conspirators ; 
and there he collected a shipful of people, most of 
whom afterwards claimed — with small truth, 
probably, — that they had supposed themselves to 
be peaceable and inoffensive immigrants, bound 
for Texas. But their craft, sailing under the 
unheroic title of Mary Jane, carried them to 
Tampico, on the coast of the state of Tamaulipas. 
General Mejia had reckoned wrongly with his 
hosts. The populace, instead of giving him sup- 
port, turned on him — angered, perhaps, at his 
having enlisted a band of foreigners — and he 
fled, leaving thirty-one prisoners, three of whom 
died and twenty-eight of whom were shot. 

Wiser than Mejia was Lorenzo de Zavala, a 
Mexican of excellent ability and strict integrity, 
who escaped to Texas, was admitted to Texan 
councils, and became vice president of the provi- 
sional government of the new republic. A small 
company of Mexicans fought with the Texans at 
San Jacinto. 

The last we saw of Houston, he was leaving the 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER 105 



Texan camp near San Antonio and setting out for 
San Felipe de Austin, where the " consultation" 
had met. There wasn't a quorum at first, because 
so many of the delegates were away with the 
troops; and the " consultation" did not effect a 
permanent organization and settle down to busi- 
ness until November 3. 

Considering that this was a critical time for the 
revolutionary movement, it cannot be said that 
the delegates worked with very much unity. 
They were in session twelve days in the one room, 
unplastered and rough, of a little frame building. 
Sam Houston was there, a delegate from Na- 
cogdoches, in his Mexican blanket and buckskin 
breeches — a favorite mode of attire. Likely 
enough there was not accommodation for all, and 
some delegates preferred to rest at night by their 
camp fires under "the myriad stars that shine 
overhead, in this clear atmosphere, with a bril- 
liancy beyond belief." 

Presiding officer Branch T. Archer, in his open- 
ing address, said that the Texans had attempted 
the work of " laying the cornerstone of liberty in 
the great Mexican Republic," and then a com- 
mittee of twelve was appointed to draw up a 
" Declaration of the People of Texas in General 



io6 



SAM HOUSTON 



Convention Assembled." As originally worded, 
the declaration must have been too extreme to 
please a majority of the delegates, for it provoked 
a debate over the question whether the consulta- 
tion should come right out for independence or 
merely declare "in defense of the republican 
principles" of the federal constitution of 1824. 

Houston had written in October, "Our prin- 
ciples are to support the Constitution and down 
with the usurper!" — meaning, of course, Santa 
Anna. He now offered a resolution instructing 
the committee to declare in favor of the constitu- 
tion. J. H. Wharton, brother of William H. 
Wharton, was chairman of the committee, and he 
so stubbornly opposed Houston's resolution that 
Houston withdrew it. The Whartons were radi- 
cals of the most pronounced type. Again were 
Houston's insight and observation vindicated; 
for when it came to a vote, thirty-three were in 
favor of declaring for the constitution and only 
fifteen in favor of declaring for out-and-out inde- 
pendence. So that much was settled. 

The texts of such declarations define for us, as 
clearly as we may hope to have it defined, the 
attitude of the people who issue them. This 
document of the Texans is vigorously put, but 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER 107 



considerably milder than we might logically sup- 
pose it would have been. There is about it so 
much of fairness and prudence that one feels that 
Mexico should have met it with measures of com- 
promise and conciliation. The Mexican "liberals," 
however, were not then strong enough to rid them- 
selves of the "Napoleon of the West"; and with 
him in power the Texans could expect nothing 
but blind efforts toward coercion. This is how 
the Texas declaration reads : — 

"Whereas General Antonio Lopez de Santa 
Anna and other military chieftains have, by force 
of arms, overthrown the federal institutions of 
Mexico and dissolved the social compact which 
existed between Texas and the other members of 
the Mexican Confederacy; now the good people 
of Texas, availing themselves of their natural 
rights, solemnly declare 

1. That they have taken up arms in defense 
of their rights and liberties, which were threatened 
by the encroachments of military despots, and in 
defense of the Republican Principles of the Federal 
Constitution of Mexico of eighteen hundred and 
twenty-four. 

2. That Texas is no longer, morally or civilly, 
bound by the Compact of Union ; yet, stimulated 



io8 



SAM HOUSTON 



by the generosity and sympathy common to a free 
people, they offer their support and assistance to 
such members of the Mexican Confederacy as will 
take up arms against military despotism. 

3. That they do not acknowledge that the 
present authorities of the nominal Mexican Re- 
public have the right to govern within the limits 
of Texas. 

4. That they will not cease to carry on war 
against the said authorities, while their troops 
are within the limits of Texas. 

5. That they hold it to be their right, during 
the disorganization of the Federal System and the 
reign of despotism, to withdraw from the Union, 
to establish an independent Government, or to 
adopt such measures as they may deem best cal- 
culated to protect their rights and liberties, but 
that they will continue faithful to the Mexican 
Government so long as that nation is governed by 
the Constitution and laws that were formed for 
the government of the Political Association. 

6. That Texas is responsible for the expenses 
of her armies now in the field. 

7. That the public faith of Texas is pledged for 
the payment of any debts contracted by her agents. 

8. That she will reward by donations in land 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER 109 



all who volunteer their services in her present 
struggle, and receive them as citizens. 

These Declarations we solemnly avow to the 
world, and call God to witness their truth and 
sincerity; and invoke defeat and disgrace upon 
our heads, should we prove guilty of duplicity." 

These are words of spirit, are they not? Not 
much room there, either, for quibble or discussion. 
It is odd that men who could express their senti- 
ments so directly and forcibly could not act with 
a similar directness and force when it came to 
putting those sentiments into practice. Yet such 
was the case. 

When they organized a provisional government, 
they planned something that couldn't possibly 
work, and that, when it was tried, not only didn't 
work but set everybody by the ears just when 
united action was needed. They provided for 
two branches — the civil and the military. The 
civil branch was composed of, first, a council con- 
sisting of one member from each municipality. 
These municipalities were subdivisions of the 
departments, and comprised "a village, hamlets, 
and a considerable area of land." Each munici- 
pality sent its delegates to the consultation — for 
example, Sam Houston was a delegate from Na- 



no 



SAM HOUSTON 



cogdoches. The delegates from each municipality 
elected one member of council for that particular 
municipality. The function of this council was 
chiefly legislative, but also, to some extent, advisory 
and even appointive. 

Secondly, the civil branch included a governor 
and lieutenant governor, elected by the consulta- 
tion. A stout radical, Henry Smith, with whom 
Houston was in sympathy, was chosen governor 
and James W. Robinson lieutenant governor. 

Then there was the military branch, which was 
to consist of a regular army of 1 1 20 men — to 
serve for two years (or the war) — and a force of 
militia composed of all the other able-bodied 
Texans. The regulars w T ere to be commanded 
by an officer with rank of major general, who was 
also to act as commander in chief of all forces 
that might be in service during the war. He was 
to be appointed by the consultation, but com- 
missioned by the governor ; and, as if to make as 
much confusion and conflict as possible, he was to 
be subject to the orders of both the council and the 
governor. Sam Houston was chosen. 

The consultation adjourned before it had pro- 
vided any way out of the difficulty, should there 
be a deadlock between governor and council; but 



SAM HOUSTON AS LEADER in 



not before it had delicately supplied one more factor 
of possible discord and danger by stipulating that 
the provisional government was to have no author- 
ity over the volunteers before San Antonio. For- 
tunately, the volunteers solved this problem, as 
we have seen, by disbanding themselves and ceas- 
ing, as an army, to exist. The consultation, its 
labors over, adjourned to meet March i of the 
next year, unless earlier summoned by governor 
and council. 

In 1845 Houston spoke at a barbecue near 
Nashville, whose people were once more proud to 
welcome him. He told his friends there that an 
appeal to arms had been made by the Texans in 
self-defense only. "To the principles of our 
provisional government of 1835, by which we 
pledged our fortunes and our sacred honor to the 
maintenance of the Constitution of 1824, we had 
adhered," he said, "with a tenacity little short of 
religious devotion." A trained soldier, he ap- 
proached reluctantly that last resort of war. 



CHAPTER X 
Confused Councils 

Houston set quickly and sensibly to work. 
He drew up a plan for the organization of the 
Texan forces; he appointed his staff; he urged 
upon council and governor the need for vigorous 
action. Governor and council were preoccupied 
with their own squabbles, sometimes rather amus- 
ing but always out of place. Houston wanted to 
get certain necessary measures passed, so that he 
could start recruiting and at least have the regular 
army organized at once. He was certain that 
sooner or later Santa Anna would take up the case 
of Texas in real earnest, and send an invading force 
much larger than the Texans had yet had to meet. 

Although by nature headstrong and impetuous, 
he not only waited with patience, but did all he 
could to calm others who were beginning to criti- 
cize and denounce the government. Some of 
these disgruntled persons held a mass-meeting at 

112 



CONFUSED COUNCILS 



113 



San Felipe. Mosely Baker offered a violent set 
of " resolutions/' and made a fiery speech in their 
defense. He wanted a new and more energetic 
government. 

Houston, the story goes, was permitted to speak. 
The consultation, he said, existed by the will of 
the people of Texas ; to put an end to it would be 
equal to handing Texas over to anarchy, and hence 
would be nothing less than criminal. Pointing a 
finger at Mosely Baker, he cried, "I had rather be 
a slave and grovel in the dust all my life than be 
a convicted felon !" So powerful was the effect 
he created that the mass-meeting broke up, and 
Mosely Baker quietly destroyed the manuscript 
of his precious resolutions. Again and again 
Houston, by his wonderful gift of persuasion, 
swayed popular assemblies. 

At last the government took the necessary ac- 
tion. Houston's headquarters were at a hamlet 
named Washington, some fifty miles up the Brazos 
from San Felipe. There he issued a proclamation. 

To all enlisting in the regulars for two years 
(or during the war), he offered twenty-four dollars 
bounty and eight hundred acres of land. "Pro- 
vision has also been made," he announced, "for 
raising an auxiliary volunteer corps to constitute 



H4 



SAM HOUSTON 



part of the army of Texas, which will be placed 
under the command and subject to the orders of 
the commander in chief. The field for promo- 
tion will be open. The terms of service will be 
various. To those who tender their services for 
or during the war will be given a bounty of six 
hundred and forty acres of land ; an equal bounty 
will be given to those who volunteer their sendees 
for two years ; if for one year a bounty of three 
hundred and twenty acres. . . . The sendees of 
five thousand volunteers will be accepted. The 
first of March next, we must meet the enemy with 
an army worthy of our cause, and which will re- 
flect honor upon freemen. Our habitations must 
be defended ; the sanctity of our hearths and 
homes must be preserved from pollution. Liberal 
Mexicans will unite with us. Our countrymen in 
the field have presented an example worthy of 
imitation. Generous and brave hearts from a 
land of freedom have joined our standard before 
Bexar. They have by their heroism and valor 
called forth the admiration of their companions 
in arms, and reflected honor on the land of their 
birth. Let the brave rally to our standard." 

This was a ringing call to arms such as Sam 
Houston well knew how to pen. But the quarrel 



CONFUSED COUNCILS 115 

between governor and council was going merrily 
on, with each giving orders and each trying to 
assert a superior authority. The governor was 
calling the council " scoundrels/' "Judases," and 
" parricides," and the council was describing the 
governor's language as "low, blackguardly, and 
vindictive." This wrangle simply blocked ihe 
wheels. The Texans had begun splendidly with 
the capture of Bexar, but now Houston was handi- 
capped. He sided with Governor Smith in the 
dispute, because he believed the governor was 
right ; the council was rather carried away by the 
idea of cooperating with the Mexicans, whereas 
the governor wanted independence for Texas and 
thought it could best be reached by keeping clear 
of any alliance with the Mexican "liberals." 
One of the early historians of that period sums up 
the quarrel by saying that "The council was 
guilty of usurpation, and the governor of great 
impudence." 

There were certain spirits who were determined 
to invade Mexico. They wanted to capture 
Matamoros, a town in the state of Tamaulipas, on 
the south bank of the Rio Grande, about twenty- 
eight miles from the river's mouth. Just why, 
they probably couldn't have explained if they 



u6 



SAM HOUSTON 



had been asked. There was a Doctor James 
Grant, a Scotsman, who had been driven from 
his fine estate in Coahuila ; and there was Colonel 
Frank W. Johnson, who had been left at the 
Alamo — these men were quite intent on this 
vain expedition. 

The council, as if resolved to show how absurd 
it could be, commissioned two men to lead the 
Matamoros venture — Johnson and one J. W. 
Fannin. Fannin seems also to have delighted in 
the title of "colonel." Indeed, so commonly does 
one encounter military honors among the Texans 
of that day that one feels like Martin Chuzzlewit 
when he "found that there were no fewer than 
four majors present, two colonels, one general, 
and a captain, so that he could not help thinking 
how strongly officered the American militia must 
be ; and wondering very much whether the officers 
commanded each other ; or if they did not, where 
on earth the privates came from." 

Fannin and Johnson both proceeded to call for 
volunteers, each on his own account and both 
ignoring Houston. Houston, under orders from 
the governor, had directed our old friend Colonel 
Bowie to take charge of the expedition. The 
governor was so far influenced by the popular 



CONFUSED COUNCILS 



117 



clamor that he evidently thought it policy to take 
some action. But Bowie did nothing; possibly 
he did not receive Houston's instructions. The 
governor therefore ordered Houston himself to 
the frontier. 

Lieutenant Colonel Neill, now in command at 
Bexar, reported to Houston that the volunteers 
who had left that place to join the Matamoros 
enterprise had thoughtfully taken with them all 
supplies on hand and left the garrison in actual 
want. Houston forwarded this report to the 
governor, and with it he sent a letter of his own. 

He has no word of complaint against the gov- 
ernor; he does not protest because his authority 
has been flouted by the council and he has been 
virtually superseded. He is thoroughly indignant, 
though, at the pettiness and short-sightedness 
which he knows menace his plans and hopes. Here 
is the letter, written from his headquarters at 
Washington, Texas, January 6, 1836 : — 

"Sir, — I have the honor to inclose to your 
excellency the report of Lieutenant Colonel J. E. 
Neill of the artillery; and most respectfully re- 
quest that you will render to the cause of Texas 
and humanity the justice of bestowing upon it 
your serious attention, and referring it to the 



n8 



SAM HOUSTON 



General Council of the provisional government in 
secret session. There, I may be permitted to 
hope, you will attend in person, that all the essen- 
tial functionaries of the government may deliberate 
and adopt some course that will redeem our country 
from a state of deplorable anarchy. Manly and 
bold decision alone can save us from ruin. I only 
require orders and they shall be obeyed. If the 
government now yields to the unholy dictation 
of speculators and marauders upon human rights, 
it were better that we had yielded to the despotism 
of a single man, whose ambition might have been 
satisfied by our unconditional submission to his 
authority, and a pronouncement, for which we 
are asked, in favor of his power. 

"In the present instance the people of Texas 
have not even been consulted. The brave men 
who have been wounded in the battles of Texas, 
and the sick from exposure in her cause, without 
blankets or supplies, are left neglected in her 
hospitals; while the needful stores and supplies 
are diverted from them, without authority and by 
self-created officers, who do not acknowledge the 
only government known to Texas and the world. 

"Within thirty hours I shall set out for the 
army, and repair there with all possible dispatch. 



CONFUSED COUNCILS 



119 



I pray that a confidential dispatch may meet me 
at Goliad, and, if I have left, that it may pursue 
me wherever I may be. 

"No language can express my anguish of soul. 
Oh, save our poor country ! — send supplies to 
the wounded, the naked, the sick, and the hungry, 
for God's sake ! What will the world think of the 
authorities of Texas ? Prompt, decided, and honest 
independence is all that can save them and redeem 
the country. I do not fear, — I will do my duty !" 

Neill was appealing for reenf or cements at Bexar, 
so Houston sent Bowie, always dependable, with 
just a few men. At the same time he instructed 
Neill to demolish the fortifications at Bexar and 
bring away the artillery. The state of the army's 
equipment, however, is shown by the fact that 
Neill couldn't remove the guns because he had no 
teams. So Bexar continued to be occupied. The 
valiant Travis reappeared upon the scene, sent by 
Governor Smith. When Neill left for home, Travis 
claimed command of the regular troops and of the 
volunteer cavalry; Colonel Bowie had to content 
himself with commanding the remainder of the 
volunteers. 

While Houston was at Refugio, the last of the 
Spanish mission-posts established on Texan soil, 



120 



SAM HOUSTON 



he was chosen a delegate from that place to the 
new convention to meet at Washington on March i. 
He also made a speech to Johnson's volunteers, 
most of whom, under the spell of his eloquent 
good sense, straightway gave up the Matamoros 
notion and joined Houston's own troops; luckily, 
for nearly all of the few men left in Johnson's 
detachment were not long after killed by the 
Mexicans, and so were the greater number of 
Grant's party. Fannin marched to Goliad. There 
he, in his fortress, like Travis in his at Bexar, 
waited the onset of the Mexicans, who were fatally 
drawing near. 

So the Matamoros expedition fizzled out; and 
such was the state of things in these lone outposts, 
when Houston went eastward to conclude a treaty 
with the Indians. The " consultation" had 
adopted a " solemn declaration" regarding the 
Indians of eastern Texas. These Indians, Chero- 
kees and fractions of other tribes from the United 
States, were not friendly to the Texans, who had 
made frequent encroachments upon their lands. 

The " declaration " was in Houston's own hand- 
writing and it certainly shows his influence, as, 
for example, at the close, where it reads: "We 
solemnly declare that they are entitled to our 



CONFUSED COUNCILS 



121 



commiseration and protection, as the first owners 
of the soil, as an unfortunate race of people, that 
we wish to hold as friends and treat with justice." 
Houston and another commissioner now summoned 
a grand council at the village of Chief Bowles of 
the Cherokees, and a treaty was entered into that 
had the good result of causing the Indians to re- 
main peaceable. This was but one more instance 
of Sam Houston's practical judgment, and one 
more service that he rendered in paving the way 
for a free and independent Texas. 

There is a sequel not wholly creditable to the 
whites. The senate of the Republic of Texas 
afterwards, when the danger was over, refused to 
confirm the treaty. In 1839, when Mirabeau B. 
Lamar was president, the Cherokees were ordered 
out of the country; and when they naturally 
declined to go, they were driven out by an armed 
force. Chief Bowles was killed, and about a 
hundred more of the Indians were slain or wounded. 
At the time this happened, Sam Houston was 
absent from Texas. We shall later see what he 
thought about it. 



CHAPTER XI 
A Famous Retreat 

Ere we shake ourselves free of this coil of poli- 
tics, we shall have to glance at the convention of 
1836. It met on March 1 and was in session 
seventeen industrious and unquiet days. On 
March 2 — the " Independence Day" of Texas — 
it adopted a declaration of independence of Mexico, 
whose government it held guilty of a goodly list 
of high crimes and misdemeanors. 

It framed a constitution derived in most features 
from that of the United States but modified to fit 
a single independent state. A provisional presi- 
dent (David G. Burnet) and vice president (Lo- 
renzo de Zavala, a Mexican) were elected by the 
convention; and a little cabinet was formed, con- 
sisting of an attorney-general and secretaries of 
state, the treasury, the navy, and war. On 
March 4, the convention appointed Sam Houston 
commander in chief of all Texan troops — regu- 

122 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



123 



lar, militia, and volunteer. Until a president 
could be chosen by the people, Houston was to be 
under the general direction of the provisional 
government. 

Though there was every reason for immediate 
action, the convention was strangely adjourned 
on March 4, not to meet again until the 7th. 
Every day came vague rumors of large and deter- 
mined columns of advancing Mexicans. From 
Gonzales eastward the Anglo-American settle- 
ments were alarmed. On February 24, Travis 
had sent forth from the Alamo that wonderful 
letter "To the People of Texas and all Americans 
in the world." "If this call is neglected," he had 
written, "I am determined to sustain myself as 
long as possible and die like a soldier who never 
forgets what is due to his own honor and that of 
his country." 

Neglected the call was, so far as provisional 
president or councils or conventions had to do 
with it. Thirty-two men from Gonzales showed 
how easy relief would have been by making their 
way through the Mexican leaguer. This casual 
aid was all that reached the doomed garrison. 
Like Chinese Gordon and his men at Khartum, 
Travis and his men at the Alamo looked out with 



124 



SAM HOUSTON 



ever-waning hope across the battlements and 
went to their death as the last great chance of 
their perilous and daring lives. In the very 
shadow of that death, Travis wrote, . . Our 
flag still waves proudly from the walls. / shall 
never surrender or retreat" 

Of that immortal garrison of the Alamo not a 
man was left. A sergeant of the Mexicans after- 
wards told of the defense in these simple words: 
"Our lifeless soldiers covered the ground. . . . 
They were heaped inside the fortress. . . . The 
wounds were generally in the neck or shoulders, 
seldom below that." They had fallen — the des- 
perate Bowie, the whimsical Crockett, and others 
of less renown — but the score was three to one. 
Like the "longue carabine" of Natty Bumpo, their 
rifles had spoken to some purpose. To greater 
purpose, indeed, than they knew. For "Re- 
member the Alamo!" became the watchword of 
Texan vengeance. 

On Sunday, March 6, the day the Alamo fell, 
the convention hastily assembled, and the mem- 
bers listened to the reading of Travis's letter of 
March 3, his last before the Mexican assault. 
"We have had," he told his government, "a 
shower of bombs and cannon balls continually 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



I2 5 



falling among us. ..." The sound of that bom- 
bardment had been carried far across the silent 
prairies, but not so far as Washington. More and 
more one feels, as one reads the records, that until 
Sam Houston became president there was no real 
government. 

When Houston had heard the letter of Travis's 
read, he made a brief, soldier-like speech. He 
thanked the convention; he touched in passing 
upon his former service and attitude as commander 
in chief. Then he left for Gonzales. Gonzales, we 
have noted, was on the eastern bank of the Guada- 
lupe where the old San Antonio road crossed the 
river. A small force was there. 

Not long after he left Washington, Houston 
sent orders to Fannin, who was at Goliad, to join 
him at Cibolo Creek, at the east of San Antonio. 
Houston intended to march with the combined 
forces to the relief of Travis. When he arrived 
at Gonzales, on March n, a rumor was being 
spread that the Alamo had been taken. He then 
ordered Fannin to blow up the fortress at Goliad 
and fall back to Victoria, on the road from Goliad 
to San Felipe de Austin. 

Houston found at Gonzales three hundred and 
seventy-four men — stout fighters all, but quite 



126 



SAM HOUSTON 



undisciplined. Three women, two young children, 
and a boy had escaped slaughter at the Alamo. 
One of the women, a Mrs. Dickinson, made her 
way to Gonzales, and reaching there on the 13th, 
brought definite news. On the evening of that 
day Houston set fire to Gonzales and started on 
his famous retreat across Texas. 

As for the ill-starred Fannin, he did not disobey 
orders, but he delayed, and the result was the 
same. He did not wish to start from Goliad be- 
fore he had' received word from two parties he 
had sent out — one under Captain King, to bring 
in families from the little post of Refugio; the 
other under Lieutenant Colonel Ward, to assist 
King. So he waited until the 19th; and then, 
although no tidings had reached him, he finally 
began his march. 

His men, mostly volunteers from the United 
States, had gone but a few miles when, to their 
dismay, they found themselves neatly surrounded 
by Mexicans. Fannin kept up a show of defense 
until nightfall, but he gradually realized how 
really defenseless he was, and with the coming 
of the day on the 20th, he surrendered. Those of 
his men who contrived to escape, always claimed 
the understanding with the Mexican commander 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



127 



was that they were to be regarded as prisoners of 
war. The " Napoleon of the West" thought 
otherwise. 

On the evening of the 26th, they were still hope- 
ful. One man even brought out his old flute and 
cheered his comrades with "Home, Sweet Home." 

On the 27th, Palm Sunday, they were led, three 
hundred and seventy-one of them, past the Mexi- 
can women who murmured "Poor fellows!" — 
out upon the prairie and there shot down like dogs. 
Twenty-seven fled into the long grass and were not 
caught. Fannin handed his watch to the officer 
in command of the firing squad, asking that he 
might not be shot in the head and might have 
decent burial. Small favors these, but overmuch 
for Mexican courtesy. He was shot in the head, 
and his body was cast in a heap with the others. 
As at the Alamo, the dead were piled with brush- 
wood and burned. That was Santa Anna's way. 

In his fine little volume, "Great Senators," 
Oliver Dyer, once a reporter in the United States 
Senate, says: "It is not probable that any one 
in these days feels, or could feel, such an interest in 
General Houston as people, and especially young 
men, felt in him forty years ago. The tragic cir- 
cumstances which attended the struggle of Texas 



128 



SAM HOUSTON 



for her independence were then fresh in our memo- 
ries. My heart leaps now and my blood grows 
hot as I recall the time, in April, 1836, when the 
news of the terrible fight in the Alamo, at San 
Antonio de Bexar, first came to the sequestered 
village of Lockport, N. Y., where I lived, then a 
boy just coming twelve years old. I wept over 
the fate of the three heroic colonels — Travis, 
Crockett and Bowie. . . . 

" . . . When four or five weeks afterwards, 
news came of the massacre of Colonel Fannin and 
his men at Goliad, . . . the whole community 
was aroused to madness. Public meetings were 
held and fiery resolutions were passed. . . ." 

If such were the feelings in a far-away corner 
of New York State, if there a twelve-year-old boy 
could be so moved, what, think you, was the effect 
in Texas of the stories of the Alamo's fall and the 
butchery at Goliad ? The effect was two-fold. 

First, all settlements west of the Trinity were 
frantic with terror. Under any conditions the 
approach of the foe brings dread to communities 
which the call of war has emptied of able-bodied 
defenders. We may imagine how, in this case, 
that dread was greatly intensified by the details 
brought by survivors of Santa Anna's deliberate 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



129 



and barbarous cruelties — cruelties such that even 
Mexican officers protested against them. Second, 
Houston's army thirsted for vengeance and was 
wild to fight, anywhere, anyhow, if only it might 
wreak that vengeance upon an enemy for which 
it felt a contemptuous hatred. So eager were these 
men for battle, so concerned for the safety of 
families and friends, so inexperienced in warfare, 
so restless, that no better tribute could be found to 
Sam Houston's genius for leadership than the fact 
that, keeping to himself his plan of campaign, he 
held his retreating army together so well. 

Houston might have risked a battle sooner than 
he did. The probable result would have been the 
concentration of all the Mexican forces in Texas, 
and another battle against great odds. Instead, 
Houston allowed the overconfident Santa Anna 
to distribute his troops through the country in 
widely severed divisions. When at last he had 
the division under Santa Anna's personal com- 
mand at a disadvantage, he moved with a swift- 
ness and a confidence that showed he had prudently 
schemed for a decisive victory. 

A glance at a map of Texas will make plain that 
one of the marked physical features of the country 
is the number of rivers flowing from northwest 



130 



SAM HOUSTON 



to southeast and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. 
These rivers in themselves form an excellent series 
of natural barriers against invasion. Houston 
planned to fall back across them, one after another, 
even if he had to go beyond the Sabine. From 
Gonzales, which was the most westerly outpost 
of Anglo-American civilization and about sixty 
miles east of San Antonio, he started on a retreat 
that, amid continual complaint, he pursued for 
almost six weeks. 

From Gonzales to the Colorado River, his army 
grew, until at one time it probably was not far 
from 1500 strong. From the Colorado eastward 
it dwindled, and only about 800 men were left to 
fight the battle of San Jacinto. Not long before 
the battle he wrote to a friend at Nacogdoches; 
"From time to time I have looked for reinforce- 
ments in vain. . . . Texas could have started 
at least 4000 men. ... It is wisdom growing out 
of necessity to meet the enemy now. Every con- 
sideration enforces it. No previous occasion would 
justify it." 

In 1776, Washington was retreating up the 
Hudson and across New Jersey with an army of 
but 3000 — unpaid, raggedly clad, wretchedly 
armed, and half-starved. Good patriots shook 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



131 



their heads sadly and doubted if he could escape. 
At last he turned, recrossed the Delaware, and with 
the loss of scarce a man, won the joyous victory 
of Trenton on Christmas night. Houston's re- 
treat suggests many a point of similarity. His 
men received nothing from their government for 
their services; he himself had, when he started, 
two hundred dollars for incidental expenses of his 
own and the army's. Their clothing was nonde- 
script and unmilitary; Houston's own attention 
to dress had for the time vanished — he wore, 
they say, an old white hat, a black coat of equal 
age, and shabby boots. His one emblem of au- 
thority seems to have been a sword of little value, 
hitched to his belt by strips of buckskin. His 
only baggage was a pair of saddle-bags holding 
official documents and fresh linen. Houston's 
men had no real military equipment. They 
furnished their own rifles. For their two little 
six-pounder cannon they broke up scrap iron and 
horseshoes as ammunition. The army was guilt- 
less of any such thing as a supply department. 
Sometimes the men were so lucky as to encounter 
a few head of stray cattle, and then they feasted. 
With a few exceptions, there were no tents, even 
for the officers. 



132 



SAM HOUSTON 



From his government Houston received no 
practical aid, but considerable meddling and fault- 
finding. After he left the Colorado, the rank and 
file were unruly and mutinous. They dropped 
out by scores, until the army was only about half 
the size it had been. Those that stuck were the 
kind of saving remnant that, by the process of 
selection, had been made the fittest to endure and 
to win. When Houston was ready, his retreat 
became an advance, and the battle of San Jacinto 
was won in not more than half an hour. 

Amid the panic that spread over the face of 
Texas the army moved on its difficult way. The 
season was uncommonly rainy; the streams had 
risen, and the trail across the prairie was in many 
places little more than a slough. The wagons sank 
to the hubs in the miry track. 

Houston was always prompt, if need was, to 
lend his shoulder to a muddy wheel. Indeed, he 
was the quickening spirit of the march and the 
camp. By his jokes and ready humor, by scolding 
and imploring, he kept the retreat active. He 
seemed able to manage everything. People living 
in cabins far from his line of march were notified 
and taken along. Once he sent a guard thirty 
miles for the blind widow and six children of a 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



133 



defender of the Alamo. On another occasion, 
when he was crossing the Colorado, he found two 
women sitting on a log by the bank. The husband 
of one of them had also fallen at the Alamo, and 
the poor soul had been left absolutely penniless 
and with no means of conveyance. Houston 
promptly handed her fifty dollars from his scanty 
funds. He never saw her again, but it is pleasant 
to know that years later, when Texas had been 
admitted to the United States, she wrote Houston 
a grateful letter in which she informed him that 
she had invested the fifty dollars in cattle, and by 
cattle raising had made herself independently well- 
to-do. 

Houston issued to the army a proclamation in 
which, calling the men " fellow-soldiers," he said: 
" There are none to aid us. There is here but a 
small force, and yet it is all that Texas has. . . . 
There are but few of us, and if we fall, the fate of 
Texas is sealed. For this reason, and until I feel 
able to meet the enemy in battle, I shall retreat." 

He wrote constantly to Rusk, the secretary of 
war for the provisional government. Here are 
extracts from some of those letters. They show 
how beset and tried he was ; and they also show, 
very plainly, that the government had done noth- 



134 



SAM HOUSTON 



ing for him. As a matter of fact it did actual 
harm by fleeing, when there was no necessity for 
doing so, from Washington, upon the Brazos River, 
to Harrisburg, some eighty miles nearer the coast. 
This certainly did not tend to check the panic 
among the Texans, and it encouraged the " Na- 
poleon of the West," who had learned no caution 
from his experience at the Alamo. There is no 
evidence that Houston's reports and appeals to 
Rusk gained from that official the least bit of 
practical aid. 

. . For forty-eight hours," Houston writes, 
"I have not eaten an ounce, nor have I slept. I 
was in constant apprehension of a rout ; a constant 
panic existed in the lines, yet I managed so well, 
or such was my good luck, that not a gun was fired 
in or near the camp, or on the march (except to 
kill beef) from the Guadalupe to the Colorado." 
(March 23.) 

"I am writing in the open air," he says again, 
"I have no tent, and am not looking for the lux- 
uries of life. . . . We must act now, and with 
great promptness. The country must be saved." 
(March 24.) 

"On my arrival on the Brazos, had I consulted 
the wishes of all, I should have been like the ass 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



135 



between two stacks of hay. Many wished me to 
go below, others above. I consulted none. I held 
no councils of war. If I err, the blame is mine." 
(March 29.) 

Houston reached Burnham's Crossing on the 
Colorado, near the site of the present town of 
Lagrange, on March 17. After a two-day halt, he 
marched down the east bank of the river to Beason's 
Ford, which was not far from where the present 
town of Columbus is located. There he stayed 
until March 26. The Mexican General Sesma, 
with not much more than seven hundred men, 
came up and went into camp on the west bank, 
but Houston did not disturb him. 

Various reasons have been given for this. Some 
say that it was because he was waiting for news 
of Fannin, which he did not receive until March 25, 
through a refugee from Goliad. Others suggest 
that he underestimated the fighting spirit of his 
men. He scarcely could have underrated their 
spirit, although he may not have been altogether 
convinced of their military effectiveness when 
brought face to face with Mexican regulars. Per- 
haps it would be nearer probability to say that, 
in his opportunity at Beason's Ford, Houston saw 
no reason for abandoning his prearranged scheme 



136 



SAM HOUSTON 



of campaign. On March 26 he started toward 
the Brazos. 

I When the army had reached San Felipe de 
Austin, on the west bank of the Brazos, Captain 
Mosely Baker, the same person whom Houston 
had silenced in the mass-meeting, declined to go 
farther with his company. He was left to guard 
the crossing at that point and distinguished him- 
self by burning the town, under the impression 
that the enemy was close at hand. The supposed 
enemy proved, however, to be nothing more dan- 
gerous than a herd of cattle. Captain Wily Mar- 
tin, with his company, caught Baker's cowardly 
spirit, and also refused to continue with the retreat. 
Detailed to guard the crossing at Fort Bend, far- 
ther down the river, he appears to have offered 
no particular resistance to Santa Anna, who, in 
personal command of Sesma's division, passed over 
and moved at a smart pace toward Harrisburg. 
The Mexican commander hoped to break the back- 
bone of such a foolish armed resistance by the 
capture of President Burnet and the Texan cabinet. 

As for Houston, still keeping his plans to him- 
self, he went up the river about one day's march, 
to what was known as Groce's, not far from the 
modern town of Hempstead. For two weeks he 



A FAMOUS RETREAT 



137 



remained there, endeavoring to use the time in 
instilling, as well as he might, much-needed sys- 
tem and discipline into his untrained and impatient 
legion. President Burnet wrote a severe letter 
to him; and it was decided at a meeting of the 
fugitive cabinet that the situation called for the 
presence in the field of the secretary of war. Rusk, 
it was thought, was the man to bring on a battle. 

Santa Anna crossed the Brazos on April 13. 
On the very same day Houston issued a stirring 
and reassuring proclamation to the terrified in- 
habitants of eastern Texas. "You will now be 
told/' he said, "that the enemy have crossed the 
Brazos, and that Texas is conquered. Reflect, 
reason with yourselves, and you cannot believe 
a part of it. The enemy have crossed the Brazos, 
but they are treading the soil on which they are 
to be conquered." On the 14th he was once more 
under way along the distressful roads. He had 
gone but a few miles when it was evident that he 
was bound toward Harrisburg. Now he could 
at least be censured no longer for retreating. He 
was quietly confident. The hour for which he 
had been waiting was about to strike. 



CHAPTER XII 



At San Jacinto 

The i 8th found Houston at Harrisburg — or 
where Harrisburg had been; for Santa Anna had 
set fire to it and little remained but ruins. Presi- 
dent and cabinet had decamped just in time to 
New Washington on the shore of Galveston Bay. 
At Harrisburg Houston left the sick and non- 
effectives under a guard of seventy-five. Some- 
where between two and three hundred men were 
thus detached from the main column. Captain 
Baker had ceased pouting and returned to the 
fold after the Brazos had been crossed, but all 
told, less than eight hundred men were available 
for battle. 

In these days of large figures, when the world 
has become used to reading of great " drives" and 
mass movements in warfare, eight hundred may 
not seem a very impressive force. It is well to 
remember, however, that the important battles 

138 



AT SAN JACINTO 



139 



of the world have not always depended on the 
mere brutal weight of numbers. At Concord, 
that 19th of April, 1775, only about five hundred 
minute-men gathered near "the rude bridge that 
arched the flood" and "fired the shot heard round 
the world." 

Houston had a conference with Secretary Rusk. 
"We need not talk," was his comment. "You 
think we ought to fight, and I think so, too." 
Rusk attempted a speech to the men, but made 
abrupt end of it. The army continued wearily 
but doggedly along the Buffalo Bayou toward the 
San Jacinto River. 

Santa Anna had gone on to New Washington, 
in the hope of seizing the government; but its 
members succeeded in making their escape to 
Galveston Island. He, therefore, started back, 
and on the morning of April 20 came in sight of 
Houston's Texans. Those Texans must have had 
a quick realization of the prudence and common 
sense of their commander, now that they saw for 
themselves how neatly the "Napoleon of the 
West" was bottled up. 

The Texans were in a bend or curve of the bayou. 
The Mexicans were south of them, with nothing 
to fall back upon save the salt marshes where the 



140 



SAM HOUSTON 



San Jacinto entered Galveston Bay. Between, 
lay the level prairie, now lush with grasses after 
the long rain. Just in the rear of Houston's men 
was a grove of live-oaks, with great tufts of Spanish 
moss hanging from the branches ; and beyond that 
was the muddy bayou. A little way out on the 
prairie were a couple of "mottes" or clumps of 
trees. Santa Anna had succeeded in getting 
himself into such a position that the only way out 
was in front. The older military writers used to 
call a trap of this kind a cul-de-sac, which is French 
for "the bottom of a bag." 

The " Napoleon of the West" had not read very 
carefully in the great Napoleon's book of war. To 
begin with, he had followed Houston across Texas 
in a straggling kind of way and had been getting 
all the time farther and farther from his base or 
source of supplies. Next, he had allowed himself 
to be crowded down into the bottom of this bag. 
Now he pitched his camp so foolishly that his own 
officers talked of it among themselves. When he 
realized that the vengeful Texans were confront- 
ing him, he seems to have lost his head. He built 
a slight barricade of saddles, baggage, and tree 
branches, and waited for something to happen. 
Yet when it did happen he was not ready. 



AT SAN JACINTO 



141 



On the 20th there was a skirmish in which one 
Texan was fatally wounded. That night Houston's 
men turned in under double guard, but the enemy 
remained peaceful. Throughout the night Houston 
was awake and alert, but with the morning he 
dozed for an hour or two, his head resting on a coil 
of rope. Early on the 21st General Cos, with some 
four hundred troops, joined the Mexicans ; but 
four hundred more meant little to the rangers who, 
when it came to fighting Spanish-Americans, 
thought nothing of giving odds. It has some- 
times been claimed that the battle of San Jacinto 
was fought by Americans temporarily in Texas 
for the sole purpose of defeating Mexico. For 
this statement there is no good ground, since it has 
been conclusively shown that at least ninety-eight 
per cent of Houston's men either were already 
residents of Texas, or remained there after the 
battle. Two volunteers from Cincinnati, however, 
did take a more or less conspicuous and audible 
part. They were two brass cannon, christened 
"The Twin Sisters." These had been presented 
by Cincinnati sympathizers with the Texan cause, 
and they were all the artillery Houston had. 

At noon a council of war was held. Secretary 
Rusk, who had come expressly to urge Houston 



142 



SAM HOUSTON 



into giving battle, now said that it was an un- 
heard-of thing for raw troops to attack veteran 
soldiers ; that a charge across open prairie without 
bayonets was equally unheard-of ; and finally that 
the Texans were in a strong position and, if they 
stayed in it, could "whip all Mexico." Houston, 
through the officers, assured himself that the men 
were eager to fight at once ; and at half past three 
he gave orders to fall in for the onset. 

Under cover of one of the mottes, the troops 
were formed. As they assembled, a drum and 
fife, their only field music, played "Come to the 
Bower," an old-time tune. On the extreme right 
was Lamar (afterwards president of the republic), 
with the cavalry ; next to him, with the two cannon, 
was Colonel Hockley, one of Houston's staff, and 
described by him as "a sage counsellor and true 
friend." The center was commanded by Colonel 
Edward Burleson, who had received the surrender 
of San Antonio de Bexar; the left by Colonel 
Sherman. Houston was with the center. 

At four o'clock he gave the order, "Forward !" 
The men moved quickly, their pace gradually in- 
creasing to a run. 

In the Mexican camp no one was looking for an 
attack at so late an hour. Arms were stacked. 



AT SAN JACINTO 



143 



Troopers were riding their unsaddled horses to 
water. Quite off their guard, swarthy figures 
were busied here and there; some with making 
shelters of boughs, others with cooking over little 
open fires ; one with this duty, another with that. 
Even more off their guard, many were stretched 
out asleep. In his tent the " Napoleon of the 
West," reassured, was taking his siesta or after- 
noon nap. Perhaps the cruel adventurer "in 
dreams his song of triumph heard," and ordered 
another massacre. Quien sabe ? Who knows ? 

There were no war correspondents with that 
Texan army, to describe for us the scene. We 
must reconstruct it for ourselves. 

We see those determined Texans trotting in an 
uneven line, through the afternoon sun, over the 
stretch of wild prairie, their rifles held at trail. 
We see the "Twin Sisters" jolting on, supported 
by four companies of infantry. We see Houston, 
the battered white hat in his hand, spurring his 
horse along the ranks. We hear him shouting 
caution to the men. 

Now they are drawing close to Santa Anna's 
flimsy barricade. Suddenly, it seems from no- 
where, on a horse spattered with mud and streaked 
with foam, up dashes a gypsy-looking rider. They 



144 



SAM HOUSTON 



know the black hair, the dark eyes, the imbrowned 
face. It is Erastus Smith — "Deaf" Smith they 
call him, whom his infirmity does not keep from 
being the chief of all Texan scouts. 

"I have cut down Vince's bridge!" he yells. 
"Now fight for your lives !" 

At that a great, hoarse cry arose. By Houston's 
orders the bridge across Vince's Bayou, a small 
stream running at their rear into the Buffalo 
Bayou, had been destroyed. They had marched 
over this bridge to reach the battle-ground, and 
now it, and with it the only practicable exit, was 
gone. It was one of those timely, vivid strokes 
that Houston could so skillfully manage. It had 
an instant effect. 

"Remember the Alamo! Remember the 
Alamo!" shrilled the rangers, to each other and 
to the confused and frightened Mexicans. The 
"Twin Sisters" were wheeled about and fired at 
close range at the barricade. But the Texans 
were too impetuous to dally much with artillery. 
They swarmed irresistibly through the Mexican 
defenses. 

Mexican officers roared frantic commands at 
their unheeding men. Springing from his tent, 
Santa Anna vainly cried out to them to lie down. 



AT SAN JACINTO 



145 



"It's no use! It's no use!" they cried back. 
They fired one desperate, haphazard volley. 
Then the Texans were upon them. 

Two of Santa Anna's officers gave good account 
of themselves that day. One was General Cas- 
trillon of the artillery, whose heart had led him 
ineffectually to plead with Santa Anna for the 
lives of a few prisoners taken at the Alamo. His 
men would not face the grim Texans, and he was 
shot dead early in the action. The other officer 
was Colonel Almonte, a very intelligent fellow, 
afterward minister to the United States. 

As for the "Napoleon of the West," his ferocity 
was tamed indeed. He wrung his hands. He 
ran distractedly about. He madly gave orders. 
"I believe they will shoot us all!" he exclaimed. 
Then he flung himself upon a horse, and led a pell- 
mell flight. 

No flight, however, could avail the Mexicans 
now. With bowie knives or the butts of their 
rifles, the yelling Texans struck them down in 
hand-to-hand combat. If they broke from the 
melee and ran, they were shot as they floundered 
in the bogs at the rear of their camp ; or they were 
overtaken by a foe at once fleet and unsparing. 

Houston's horse was several times hit. He 



146 



SAM HOUSTON 



himself was struck in the ankle by a rifle ball which 
shattered the bone and caused him much pain. 
Still he kept in the saddle. After the Mexican 
flight had begun, he tried to restrain his men, but 
he very well knew how idle was such an attempt. 

Why, there was his trusted "Deaf" Smith, 
wariest and most resourceful of scouts, charging 
ahead of the Texan infantry, flinging discretion to 
the prairie winds. Smith's horse falls, and he 
comes a cropper. Like a flash he is on his feet. 
He levels his pistol at a Mexican who is threaten- 
ing to skewer him with a bayonet. The cap on 
the pistol misses fire. He throws the treacherous 
weapon full in the face of the dazed Mexican, tears 
the musket from the man's grasp, and lays about 
with it like a demon. 

Look where he might over that quickly won 
field, Houston could see an equal zeal. "Me no 
Alamo!" protested the Mexicans at the top of 
their lungs as they begged for mercy. "Me no 
Alamo!" Houston's good horse sank at last be- 
neath him. With a splintered ankle, Houston 
could not walk. He was carried back to the camp. 

Less than fifty of the Mexicans escaped. On 
behalf of his commander in chief, Colonel Almonte 
made a formal surrender. Thirteen hundred and 



AT SAN JACINTO 



147 



sixty Mexicans were killed, wounded, or captured. 
The Texan casualties were but two killed and 
twenty-three wounded. 

Among the spoils of war were horses, mules, 
clothing, arms, baggage, and twelve thousand 
dollars in silver. Of none of these did the scrupu- 
lous Houston take any share. 

The prisoners were not roughly treated, but they 
were ridiculed unmercifully. The Texans paraded 
about in noisy procession, carrying lighted candles 
taken from the equipage of the enemy. Bonfires 
shone through the night. " Santa Anna? Santa 
Anna?" the Texans mocked the Mexican officers, 
until some of them, thinking to evade their tor- 
mentors, tore off their shoulder straps. With such 
festivities and rude horseplay the victors of San 
Jacinto made merry. 

" See ! Just above th' horizon's farthest edge 
A lone star rises in the gloomy night ; 
Dimly and tremblingly its rays are seen, 
Shining through cloud rifts or concealed from sight ; 
Faintly it glimmers o'er the Alamo ; 
Redly it gleams above Jacinto's field ; 
Higher it rises — now, brave hearts, rejoice — 
'Tis fixed in beauty on heaven's azure shield." 



CHAPTER XIII 

An Important Capture 

Meanwhile, the " Napoleon of the West" had 
disappeared. He sped toward Vince's Bayou, 
only to find the bridge down. In he plunged. His 
horse sank into the mud and stuck there. Santa 
Anna abandoned the animal, swam the stream, 
and went on afoot. By chance he found in a 
deserted house some old clothes, not altogether 
in keeping with the proud estate of a Dictator. 

When he came forth, he was a queer, fugitive fig- 
ure in slippers of red worsted, linen trousers, a blue 
cotton blouse, and a leather cap. To the search 
parties that scattered to look for Santa Anna and 
others, Houston had said they would find the 
runaway chieftain, if they found him at all, "mak- 
ing his retreat on all fours, and he will be dressed 
as bad, at least, as a common soldier." "Examine 
closely every man you find," were Houston's in- 
structions. 

148 



AN IMPORTANT CAPTURE 



The next day, as he was making his footsore 
way through mire and heavy grass toward the 
Brazos "bottoms," Lieutenant Sylvester and a 
small party came upon him. He dropped in the 
grass, but too late to escape detection. To Syl- 
vester he denied that he was an officer, but the 
lieutenant had caught sight of a fine cambric shirt 
beneath the cotton jacket. He was taken up on 
horseback behind one of the men, and brought as 
quickly as possible to Houston. 

Houston had been kept awake all night by the 
pain in his wounded ankle. He now lay on a rude, 
improvised couch, presumably in the open air, 
with none of the comforts needed by a man in his 
condition. After his vigil, he had fallen into a 
drowse. 

In the camp about him, the Texans, like big 
boys at play, went on with their pranks, tying 
ribbons and officers' sashes on the captured mules, 
and rummaging through the plunder. 

All of a sudden it is noised about that Santa 
Anna has been captured — that, indeed, he is 
here. The little Napoleon appears. He makes 
a low bow. "I am General Antonio Lopez de 
Santa Anna," he says, "President of the Mexican 
Republic, and I claim to be your prisoner of war." 



SAM HOUSTON 



Houston motions to him to be seated on a box — • 
the only seat visible in the whole camp. Then 
he sends for Colonel Almonte, to act as interpre- 
ter, while Santa Anna takes a seat on the box, 
his eyes roaming distrustfully about. "El Presi- 
dente !" (the President) goes the word from mouth 
to mouth among the Mexicans. 

As soon as Almonte arrived, the interview be- 
gan. Santa Anna must by this time have been 
quite at his ease, for he directed the following 
statement at Houston, who throughout was 
courteous but positive: "That man may con- 
sider himself born to no common destiny who has 
conquered the Napoleon of the West; and it now 
remains for him to be generous to the vanquished." 

"You should have remembered that at the 
Alamo," tersely returned Houston. Even after 
such a flattering allusion to his destiny, he did not 
intend to let Santa Anna claim mercy as if by 
special right. 

Then Santa Anna pleaded that at the Alamo he 
was justified by "the usages of war." "Such 
usages," answered Houston, "among civilized 
nations have yielded to the influences of humanity." 

Santa Anna pretended that he had orders from 
his government commanding him to exterminate 



AN IMPORTANT CAPTURE 151 



every man found bearing arms in Texas, and to 
treat all such as freebooters. "Why, you are the 
government of Mexico/' Houston flung back. 

When Houston mentioned Goliad, Santa Anna 
declared that he had been told by General Urrea 
that Fannin surrendered "at discretion" — that 
is, without any understanding whatever. He had 
not known, he said, of any understanding that 
the Texans were to be treated as prisoners of 
war. He blustered, too, about making Urrea pay 
some day for the deception. 

By all this Houston was not at all impressed. 
He had no respect for, or confidence in, Santa Anna. 
But he believed that, as he afterwards wrote to 
Rusk, "Texas, to be respected, must be consid- 
erate, politic, and just in her actions." Some vio- 
lent and unthinking spirits were for disposing of 
Santa Anna, there and then; but that night the 
Mexican commander slept in a tent well guarded. 

President Burnet and his cabinet now hastened 
back to enjoy the fruits of Houston's triumph. 
Santa Anna was quite ready, in exchange for his 
life, to agree to almost any conditions. The terms 
finally arranged were substantially those first 
suggested by Houston in a memorandum to Secre- 
tary Rusk. 



SAM HOUSTON 



Rusk now relieved Houston of the command of 
the army, and Houston started for New Orleans 
to have his wound properly cared for. Before he 
left, he addressed a farewell to the men. 

You have encountered odds of two to 
one of the enemy against you, and borne your- 
selves, in the onset and conflict of battle, in a 
manner unknown in the annals of modern war- 
fare. While an enemy to your independence re- 
mains in Texas the work is incomplete ; but when 
liberty is firmly established by your patience and 
your valor, it will be fame enough to say, 'I was a 
member of the army of San Jacinto !' 

"In taking leave of my brave comrades in arms 
I cannot suppress the expression of that pride which 
I so justly feel in having had the honor to com- 
mand them in person. . . . At parting, my 
heart embraces you with gratitude and affection." 

Then he sailed for New Orleans, which he 
reached after a slow voyage. Throngs waited on 
the levee to see him land. He was taken to the 
home of his friend William Christy, and there was 
attended by Dr. James Kerr, the same surgeon who 
had treated him for the wound received at Horse- 
shoe Bend. More than twenty pieces of bone 
were removed, but his recovery was complete. 



AN IMPORTANT CAPTURE 153 



Santa Anna signed two treaties, one open and 
one secret. This was on May 14. Within a few 
days the Mexican forces had finally withdrawn 
beyond the Rio Grande. 

The battle ground of San Jacinto was purchased 
by the State of Texas in 1906 for a memorial park. 
About fifteen miles northwestward, on Buffalo 
Bayou, is the flourishing city of Houston, which 
was laid out in 1836. There, on Caroline Street, 
lived at one time the man who made San Jacinto 
possible and for whom the city was named. In 
the eastern part of the State is Houston County, 
with Crockett (0 rare combination !) for its county 
seat. At Huntsville, in Walker County, is the 
Sam Houston Normal Institute. In 1905 statues 
of Houston and Austin were accepted from Texas 
and placed in Statuary Hall of the Capitol at 
Washington. In that hall each State is entitled 
to statues of two of its distinguished citizens. 

Thus Texas has sought to honor its liberator 
and leader. We have yet to see how he labored 
for Texas after Texas became free — a nation in 
area almost five times the size of England, a nation 
over which, as Daniel Webster said, a bird could 
not fly in a week, but a nation without organiza- 
tion or experience. 



CHAPTER XIV 



President oe Texas 

Houston's fame was now assured. In the 
United States Senate, Thomas H. Benton — 
"Old Bullion" Benton, as the public nicknamed 
him, — himself one of the picturesque figures of 
American history, spoke at some length in honor 
of the hero of San Jacinto. 

. . He was appointed an ensign in the 
army of the United States," said Benton, "during 
the late war with Great Britain, and served in the 
Creek campaign under the banners of Jackson. 
I was the lieutenant colonel of the regiment to 
which he belonged, and the first field officer to 
whom he reported. I then marked in him the 
same soldierly and gentlemanly qualities which 
have since distinguished his eventful career : 
frank, generous, brave; ready to do or to suffer 
whatever the obligations of civil or military duty 
imposed; and always prompt to answer the call 

154 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 155 



of honor, patriotism, and friendship. Sincerely 
do I rejoice in his victory. . . . 

". . . He is the first self-made general since 
the time of Mark Antony and the King Antigonus, 
who has taken the general of the army and the 
head of the government captive in battle. Dif- 
ferent from Antony, he has spared the life of his 
captive, though forfeited by every law, human 
and divine." 

In Texas, the old complaints against Houston 
were forgotten as a great ground-swell of en- 
thusiasm stirred the country. Henry Smith, the 
obstinate provisional president whom we have 
already met, and Stephen F. Austin, to whom 
Texas owed so much, were Houston's rivals for 
the presidency of the youngest and feeblest of 
republics. But, as against more than five thou- 
sand ballots for Houston, Smith had less than seven 
hundred and fifty, and Austin not six hundred. 

Houston at once made Austin his secretary of 
state and Smith his secretary of the treasury. 
Of this generous act, one writer has said: "I 
hardly know another instance of such quiet 
strength." Houston himself put forth only this 
modest claim: . . I was firmly impressed 
with a belief that, if either of the gentlemen should 



156 



SAM HOUSTON 



be elected, it would be next to impossible to or- 
ganize and sustain a government. . . . Not being 
identified with either of the parties, I believed I 
would be enabled so to consolidate the influence 
of both, by harmonizing them, as to form an ad- 
ministration which would triumph over all the 
difficulties attendant upon the outset of the 
constitutional government of Texas. " 

Those were "pretty pinching times" for the 
new nation. It had very little wealth, except in 
land. Its resources were scant. Its trade was 
too small to yield much revenue from taxes. Fi- 
nances were managed, probably, with as much 
care as they really could be ; but Texas simply 
couldn't pay its debts or meet its expenses. At 
the end of Houston's first administration, the 
national debt totaled in the neighborhood of 

$2,000,000. 

Houston's policy toward the Indians was what 
we have learned to expect from him. Unfor- 
tunately, in this policy Houston did not have 
proper support from Texas officials or from private 
citizens. People talked of "Houston's pet In- 
dians," as if the governor's idea of justice and 
common sense toward the red man were just an 
amiable hobby. Besides this, the Mexicans, who 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 157 



would not admit that Texas was free, kept up such 
feeble and foolish hostility as they could ; and they 
were constantly trying to arouse the Indians 
against the Texans. 

Although Mexico had, generally speaking, all 
she could attend to at home, yet the Texans were 
not ready to ignore the possibility of another 
Mexican invasion. So an army was maintained 
for a while. This army was largely made up not 
of Texan settlers, for most of these had returned 
to their homes after San Jacinto ; but of volun- 
teers from the United States — an unruly crowd 
who compelled their commander, General Lamar, 
to retire and tried to run things at their own 
sw r eet will. 

Houston took a shrewd step to rid himself and 
Texas of this disorderly element. He gave about 
three fourths of them a furlough until needed. 
Then he showed his excellent judgment of men by 
appointing Albert Sidney Johnston to command 
the remainder. Johnston had three horses shot 
under him at Monterey, in the Mexican War, and 
as a general in the Confederate service was killed 
in the battle of Shiloh. He had great military 
talent. Jefferson Davis, President of the Con- 
federate States, said after Johnston's death: 



158 



SAM HOUSTON 



" Without doing injustice to the living, it may 
safely be said that our loss is irreparable." Houston 
was probably the first to recognize Johnston's 
distinguished ability as a military leader. 

Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar followed Houston 
as president; for the constitution provided that 
no one could be president for two successive terms. 
He was an honest and patriotic man, Lamar; 
able, too, in his way; and at San Jacinto he had 
shown bravery. He had a brother who became asso- 
ciate justice of the United States Supreme Court, 
and who reveled in the name of Lucius Quintus 
Cincinnatus Lamar. Mirabeau Buonaparte, in his 
political theories, was just about as "highfalutin'" 
as his name might suggest. 

He believed in an aggressive, nagging policy 
toward the Indians ; a great navy ; a hostile at- 
titude toward Mexico, and a generally showy style 
of government. For the fiscal year ending Sep- 
tember 30, 1839, expenses were more than $900,000, 
while receipts were less than $188,000. By the 
close of Lamar's administration the national debt 
was nearly $7,500,000. 

Lamar was responsible for a costly expedition 
to capture Santa Fe, New Mexico. It had been 
said — probably with truth — that the people 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 159 



of New Mexico would very gladly be united with 
Texas. The expedition ended in utter disaster, and 
the members of it were captured. 

When, in 1841, Houston again came into office, 
he said, in his first message: "We are not only 
without money but without credit, and for want 
of punctuality, without character. . . . Patriot- 
ism, industry, and enterprise are now our only 
resources, apart from our public domain and the 
precarious revenues of the country." By severe 
and drastic economy throughout his second term, 
he succeeded in properly organizing the finances. 

To his " venerated friend" Jackson, who in 
1837 had signed the bill recognizing Texan inde- 
pendence, he wrote thus: . . I entertain con- 
fidence in the speedy success of Texas if I am 
sustained in carrying out a wise policy, to live 
within our means, act defensively, cultivate our 
rich land, raise a revenue from import duties, 
make and keep peace with the Indians, and, if 
possible, get peace with Mexico, in the meantime 
watch her, be prepared, and if an army invades 
us, never to let them return." 

In every way Houston showed his level head. 
He chuckled as he vetoed measure after measure 
put forward by a fantastic congress. When the 



i6o 



SAM HOUSTON 



United States decided not to annex Texas, he 
promoted cordial relations with Great Britain, 
provoking the jealousy of the United States 
toward any foreign nation that might attempt to 
gain such a foothold in North America. It is 
reported that later he thus explained his position. 
" Suppose," he said, "a charming lady has two 
suitors. One of them, she is inclined to believe, 
would make the better husband, but is a little 
slow to make interesting propositions. Don't 
you think, if she were a skillful practitioner at 
Cupid's court, she would pretend that she loved 
the other 'feller' best and be sure that her favorite 
would know it? If ladies are justified in making 
use of coquetry in securing their annexation to 
good and agreeable husbands, you must excuse 
me for making use of the same means to annex 
Texas to the United States." 

The capitol was established at Austin, moved to 
Houston, then to Washington, and then back to 
Austin. While it was at Washington, a British 
tourist, by chance of similar name, Mrs. M. H. 
Houstoun, visited the place and saw the congress in 
session. Her account is almost as satirical as Mrs. 
Trollope's description of a visit to the capitol at 
Washington, D. C. 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 161 



"... While public business was under dis- 
cussion," says Mrs. Houstoun, "the honourable 
members of Congress were to be seen seated on 
candle boxes and sugar casks; in short, on any- 
thing they could find ; and each man was whittling 
away without intermission. 

"A piece of wood is placed before each senator, 
who, were it not for this necessary precaution, 
would very soon, in common with his honourable 
friends, cut the table to pieces. No sooner is a 
member seated, than he takes out his knife, and 
never leaves off cutting away, whether speaking 
or silent." 

For President Houston himself she is quite out- 
spoken in praise. "Without using any undue 
means to make himself popular," she remarks, 
"the President is courteous and polite to persons 
of all ranks ; and, though I believe a Tory at heart, 
makes no difference in his civility of manner, to 
any parties or factions." 

Houston's farewell address dwelt on the matter 
of annexation and expressed his real feelings re- 
garding it. "The attitude of Texas now," he 
said, "in my apprehension, is one of peculiar 
interest. The United States have spurned her 
twice already. Let her, therefore, maintain her 



162 



SAM HOUSTON 



position firmly, as it is, and work out her own 
political salvation. ... If Texas goes begging 
again for admission into the United States, she 
will only degrade herself. They will spurn her 
again from their threshold, and other nations will 
look upon her with unmingled pity. ... If the 
United States shall open the door and ask her to 
come into the great family of States, you will then 
have other conductors, better than myself, to 
lead you into a union with the beloved land from 
which we have sprung — the land of the broad 
stripes and bright stars." 

So far as we can now judge, Houston at first 
feared that Texas was not strong enough to con- 
tinue independent, but in course of time he more 
or less modified that opinion. Probably his per- 
sonal choice would always have been in favor of 
independence. In 1843 he wrote in a private 
letter: "It is not selfishness in me to say that I 
desire to see Texas occupy an independent position 
among the nations of the earth, to which she is 
justly entitled by her enterprise, daring, suffer- 
ings, and privations." Doubtless it is true, too, 
that he would have been glad to be ranked in 
history as the founder of a new state — among 
those to whom Lord Bacon assigned first place 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 163 



in his " marshaling of the degrees of sovereign 
honor." The British charge, in his dispatches to 
his government, in which we should certainly 
suppose him to give his actual opinion, repre- 
sented Houston as incorruptible, with no " small 
desire for office" or " smaller greed for money" 
but having "a grand ambition to associate his 
name with a nation's rise." 

Of course all the Texans did not agree with 
Houston in everything. But this did not deter 
him a bit. When Sam Houston laid down his 
office in 1844, some few professed to be suspicious 
of him, and here and there might have been found 
a petty dislike or local grudge. In the main, 
however, none disputed his influence or his position 
of power. 

It must have required a man with a vision to 
see then what Houston apparently saw in the 
future of Texas. At that period Galveston, the 
only seaport worthy of notice, where practically 
all of Texas commerce was centered and whence 
practically all of the national revenue came, was 
described as made up of about three hundred 
structures that "a bold person would or might call 
houses." The town boasted but one brick chim- 
ney. The buildings were raised about two feet 



164 



SAM HOUSTON 



on blocks, to keep them out of the universal ooze, 
through which, untroubled save by dogs, pigs 
wandered hither and yon. 

In December, 1844, Houston was succeeded by 
Anson Jones, described to us as "a person of me- 
dium height, medium weight, and medium intellect" 
and "a well-meaning, good-hearted individual of 
much common sense." On March 1, 1845, Presi- 
dent Tyler signed the bill for the annexation of Texas. 
In June of the same year, Andrew Jackson, Hous- 
ton's friend and pattern of a statesman, died 
at "The Hermitage," his country estate near Nash- 
ville, Tennessee. The government of the Re- 
public of Texas continued until early in 1846. 
In that year began the Mexican War, which was 
one of the results of annexation. 

The western boundary was in dispute. Texas 
declared that the boundary line was at the Rio 
Grande ; Mexico, that it was at the Nueces River. 
This would lessen the size of the new state con- 
siderably. President Polk accepted, for the United 
States, the limits set by Texas for itself. Further- 
more, the Mexican congress had announced that 
annexation would be regarded as equivalent to a 
declaration of war, and had later severed diplo- 
matic relations with the United States. 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 165 



On April 23, the Mexicans crossed the Rio 
Grande and shed the first blood — on soil that they 
claimed, but which was referred to in Tyler's 
message as "our own territory." Abraham Lin- 
coln, who was then in Congress, demanded, in a 
set of resolutions that came to be called the "Spot 
Resolutions," where the precise "spot" of the 
bloodshed was ; and inquired if the bloodshed had 
not been brought on by the action of the United 
States in sending troops thither. General Grant, 
many years afterwards, said, in his "Personal 
Memoirs" (1885-86), that the American troops 
were sent "apparently in order to force Mexico 
to initiate war." 

When Texas had resigned nationality and, as 
no other State had ever done, had entered directly 
into the Union, Sam Houston once more became 
an American citizen. In 1846, he was elected to 
the United States Senate, with Rusk as his col- 
league, and in March took his seat in the Twenty- 
ninth Congress. A marked figure, he remained in 
the Senate for two terms. Oliver Dyer, the lad from 
Lockport, N. Y., when a reporter in the Senate, 
"was not without apprehension" as he "first ap- 
proached General Houston and looked him over." 

"It was easy," Dyer tells us, "to believe in his 



SAM HOUSTON 



heroism, and to imagine him leading a heady fight, 
and dealing destruction on his foes. . . . He 
was large of frame, of stately carriage and dignified 
demeanor, and had a lionlike countenance. . . . 
His dress was peculiar, but it was becoming to his 
style. The conspicuous features of it were a 
military cap and a short military cloak of fine 
blue broadcloth, with a blood-red lining. After- 
wards I occasionally met him when he wore a 
vast and picturesque sombrero and a Mexican 
blanket — a sort of ornamented bedquilt, with a 
slit in the middle, through which the wearer's 
head is thrust. . . 

Houston's " principal employment in the Sen- 
ate," Dyer goes on to say, "was whittling pine 
sticks. I used to wonder where he got his pine 
lumber, but never fathomed the mystery. He 
would sit and whittle away, and at the same time 
keep up a muttering of discontent at the long- 
winded speakers. . . ." Another writer claims 
that Houston's material was cypress shingles. 
Whatever it may have been, it appears generally 
agreed that he was a tireless whittler. 

His voice was heard in behalf of his "pet In- 
dians." "I am a friend of the Indian," he said 
in one of his speeches, "upon the principle that I 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 167 



am a friend to justice. We are not bound to make 
them promises ; but if a promise be made to an 
Indian, it ought to be regarded as sacredly as if 
it were made to a white man." 

He deplored the lack of attention paid to the 
welfare of the Indian, when missionaries were being 
plentifully sent to foreign parts. "Is not the soul 
of an American Indian, in the prairie," he asked, 
"worth as much as the soul of a man on the Ganges 
or in Jerusalem?" 

He was opposed to Senator Douglas's Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill, cutting the Territory of Nebraska 
into two parts, of which the southern was named 
Kansas, and leaving it to the settlers of the two 
new territories whether or not they should have 
slave labor. Rusk was in favor of the bill, and 
Houston's opposition to it cost him, for the time 
being, his political popularity in Texas. 

Three thousand clergymen in New England 
presented a petition against the bill. Douglas 
burst forth into abuse of the petition and of those 
who had presented it. He called the clergymen 
desecrators of the pulpit and the petition a calumny 
and a falsehood — doubtless with the great voice 
and high- wrought gestures that characterized him. 
Houston was not personally in sympathy with 



i68 



SAM HOUSTON 



the general opinions of the petitioners, but he took 
the furious wind out of Douglas's sails by replying, 
with his usual trenchant common sense: " Min- 
isters have a right to remonstrate. They are like 
other men. Because they are ministers of the 
Gospel, they are not disfranchised of political rights 
and privileges." 

Houston's whole course while he was in the 
Senate was conservative as contrasted with the 
extreme or radical faction in the South. It is 
stated that he and John Bell, who was a senator 
from Houston's old State of Tennessee, were the 
only senators from southern states who voted 
against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. In the bill for 
the establishing of government in the Territory 
of Oregon, he supported the provision that pre- 
vented slavery in that Territory. Calhoun and 
Butler, the two senators from South Carolina, 
interposed; but what they thought, or what the 
whole South might think, mattered little to Hous- 
ton. 

"Disunion," he said on the floor of the Senate, 
"has been proclaimed in this hall. What a de- 
lightful commentary on the freedom of our in- 
stitutions and the forbearance of the public mind 
when a man is permitted to go unscathed and 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 169 



unscourged who, in a deliberative body like this, 
has made such a declaration !" 

Houston was as courageous and independent as 
ever, but he was also, in a certain way, mellower 
and milder. For example, we find him humorously 
observing: "I have not the pleasure of seeing in 
his seat at this moment my friend, the Senator 
from South Carolina [Butler], but we have had, 
on several occasions, little spats on the floor, 
always awakening some new and pleasant emo- 
tion in my heart toward him. Sometimes he is a 
little sharp and razorish in his remarks ; but still I 
like him." It is safe to say that the earlier Hous- 
ton would not have been likely to refer with so 
jocular an air to a political opponent. 

In 1840 Houston had married a Miss Margaret 
M. Lea of Alabama ; and it was probably due in 
part to her influence that he became a member of 
the Baptist Church. While in Washington he 
used to be seen in his pew, apparently absorbed 
in whittling out little toys with his jackknife. 
He must all the time, however, have been paying 
close attention to the sermons, for he was fond of 
giving outlines of them in the letters he wrote 
home on Sunday afternoons. 

In one way and another Houston's name was 



170 



SAM HOUSTON 



more than once mentioned in connection with the 
Presidency, but nothing ever came of it. Once, 
in a Senate speech of 1855, he said: "When the 
Senator from Iowa supposes that I would cater 
for the Presidency of the United States, he does me 
great injustice. I would not cater for any office 
beneath Heaven. But, sir, I know one thing: if 
it were to be forced upon me, I should make a great 
many changes in some small matters." 

In 1857 Houston was a candidate for the gov- 
ernorship of Texas on an independent ticket, but 
he was defeated by H. R. Runnels, candidate of 
the Democratic party. This was the only time 
that Houston was ever defeated by the vote of the 
people of Texas. He did not take a very vigorous 
interest in the campaign, and he dismissed the 
result lightly. With a touch of that increasing 
good humor that we have already noted, he said 
to the Senate: "It had been insisted upon that 
Texas could not get along without my services; 
but they have demonstrated to me that they can 
get along without my services, and I am exceed- 
ingly glad of it, because it shows their increasing 
prosperity." 

Not for long, however, did Texas try to do with- 
out the services of its chief citizen. In 1859 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 171 



Houston defeated Runnels. It was a triumph 
both for him and for the sane principles he de- 
fended. But the election of Lincoln hurried on 
secession. Houston tried to hold Texas back. . . . 
"He might have accomplished/' says a Texas 
authority, "anything less than the impossible; 
but this was the task, in fact, that he had now set 
himself, and it is no wonder that he failed." 

A few days before the presidential election of 
i860, Houston spoke from the balcony of the Tre- 
mont House in Galveston. His friends asked him 
not to speak, as they were afraid the mob might 
attempt violence. He waved them aside, and 
standing there "in the presence of a crowd to 
whom few others could safely have spoken as he 
did," uttered these solemn words of prophecy and 
warning : — 

"Some of you laugh to scorn the idea of blood- 
shed as a result of secession, and jocularly propose 
to drink all the blood that will ever flow in conse- 
quence of it ! But let me tell you what is coming 
on the heels of secession. The time will come when 
your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, 
will be herded together like sheep and cattle at the 
point of the bayonet, and your mothers and wives, 
and sisters and daughters, will ask, Where are 



172 



SAM HOUSTON- 



they? You may, after the sacrifice of countless 
millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands 
of precious lives, as a bare possibility, win Southern 
independence, if God be not against you, but I 
doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you 
in the doctrine of State rights, the North is deter- 
mined to preserve this Union." 

A group of political leaders had issued, in de- 
fiance of Houston, a call for a convention to meet 
on January 28, 1861. The convention met, ad- 
journed after a brief session, reassembled, and on 
March 4 counted the Texan vote — a little over 
13,000 against secession; more than 44,000 in 
favor of it. On that very day Lincoln, in his in- 
augural speech, was saying: "I have no purpose, 
directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institu- 
tion of slavery in the States where it exists : " but also 
declaring that he would do his utmost to keep his 
oath to " preserve, protect, and defend" the Union. 

Houston was thereupon summoned to appear 
before the convention on March 16 and take a 
new oath of office, in which he must swear alle- 
giance to the Confederate States of America. He 
absolutely refused, and asserted that after the vote 
on secession had been taken, the convention no 
longer had a right to exist. Then the convention 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 173 



declared the governorship vacant, and instructed 
one Edward Clark, the lieutenant governor, who 
had ridden into office "on the tail of Houston's 
coat," to assume the functions of governor until 
the next election could be held. 

. . I shall make no endeavor," said Houston, 
"to maintain my authority as chief executive of 
the State, except by the peaceful exercise of my 
functions. When I can no longer do this, I shall 
calmly withdraw from the scene. ..." 

So while the convention was calling upon him 
to come forward and take the oath, he sat in his 
office, whittling a pine stick; "not that he loved 
Texas less, but that he loved Texas more as a 
State of the old Union than as a State of the new 
Confederacy." One morning he found that Clark 
had reached the governor's room before him. 
Thereupon he retired to Huntsville, glad at 
heart, no doubt, to quit public life forever. 

A northern man, who was in Texas from 1861 to 
1866, tells a story that shows Houston, even in his 
latest years, had lost none of his gift for dramatic 
popular appeal. Colonel Moore had organized a 
fine volunteer regiment, eleven hundred strong, and 
he invited Houston to review it. On the appointed 
day, there was Houston, in his old rude service 



174 



SAM HOUSTON 



uniform, — the cheap sword at his side, the bat- 
tered hat on his head, — a figure out of that other 
Texas that was but a quarter-century distant and 
yet that seemed so very far away. 

The large crowd rustled and stood on tiptoe. 
Many were choking back the tears. 

Colonel Moore requested Houston to take com- 
mand. The remainder of the story is here given 
in the words of the original account. 

"' Shoulder arms.' 

"' Right about face.' The regiment now facing 
to the rear, the General cried out in stentorian 
tones of sarcasm : 'Do you see anything of Judge 
Campbell or Williamson S. Oldham here?' 

'"No/ was the emphatic reply. [Oldham and 
Campbell had been strong opponents of Houston 
on the secession question.] 

'"Well/ said the General, 'they are not found 
at the front nor even at the rear.' 

"'Right about, front face.' 

"'Eyes right. Do you see anything of Judge 
Campbell's son here ? ' 

"'No, he has gone to Paris to school,' responded 
the regiment. 

"'Eyes left. Do you see anything of young 
Sam Houston here ? ' 



PRESIDENT OF TEXAS 175 



"'Yes/ was the thrilling response. [Young Sam 
was a member of the regiment.] 

"'Eyes front. Do you see anything of old Sam 
Houston here?' By this time the climax of ex- 
citement was reached, and the regiment and citi- 
zens responded in thunder tones, 'Yes!' and then 
united in a triple round of three times three and 
a tiger for the old hero." 

Houston's last speech was delivered on March 18, 
1863, in the city named for him. "As I behold this 
large assemblage, who from their homes and daily 
toil have come to greet once again the man who so 
often has known their kindness and affection, I 
can feel that even yet I hold a place in their high 
regard. This manifestation is the highest com- 
pliment that can be paid to the citizen and patriot." 

On July 26, 1863, three weeks after 37,000 starv- 
ing prisoners of war had surrendered at Vicksburg, 
Sam Houston, having fulfilled the allotted three- 
score and ten, quietly passed away. 



CHAPTER XV 



Houston the Man 

As we have followed Sam Houston through 
his varied and adventureful career, we have, let 
us hope, gained some impression of the kind of 
man he was. Perhaps a few further glimpses of 
him will serve" to make that impression yet clearer 
and more intimate. 

When Houston's statue was accepted for Statu- 
ary Hall by the House of Representatives, a mem- 
ber from Tennessee said : " Having seen Houston 
while I was a boy, I feel constrained to say that 
the marble statue of him we are this day accept- 
ing, while probably picturing him in his youth, 
does not do full justice to the magnificent physique 
he possessed when in after days he became the 
hero of two nations. Houston was a man of 
majestic proportions, and wherever he went never 
failed to impress all beholders with the conviction 
that he was one of the giants of the earth." 

176 



HOUSTON THE MAN 



177 



When he delivered his notable speech at Galves- 
ton, just before Texas went with the Confederacy, 
" he stood/' wrote one who heard him, . . where 
every eye could scan his magnificent form, six feet 
and three inches high, straight as an arrow, with 
deep-set and penetrating eyes looking out from 
heavy and thundering eyebrows, a high, open 
forehead, with something of the infinite intellec- 
tual shadowed there, crowned with white locks 
. . ., and a voice of the deep basso tone, which 
shook and commanded the soul of the hearer; 
added to all this a powerful manner, made up of 
deliberation, self-possession, and restrained maj- 
esty of action, leaving the hearer impressed with 
the feeling that more of his power was hidden 
than revealed." 

"He was," a member of his family has stated, 
" regular in his habits and plain in his tastes, except 
in the matter of his dress, which was much com- 
mented on, but which had at least the merit of 
originality. For instance, he often wore, when in 
Washington, a vest of tiger-skin. . . . Instead 
of his overcoat, he would sometimes wear a dark- 
brown blanket with stripes of a lighter shade, 
thrown around his shoulders. A light-gray, broad- 
brimmed hat of felt or beaver was the only hat I 

N 



I 7 8 



SAM HOUSTON 



remember seeing him wear. His style of dress could 
not make him look ridiculous, nor did it detract 
from the commanding air which belonged to him." 

In manner, Houston was very much, and very 
genuinely, "of the old school." To women par- 
ticularly, of whatever relative station, he was 
most polite and gracious, and his politeness was 
true politeness of the heart. "It was a matter of 
common jocose remark that if 'Old Sam Jacinto' 
[Houston's nickname] should ever become Presi- 
dent, he would have a cabinet of women." 

He had a considerable vein of humor, which ap- 
peared frequently in his private speech, less often 
in his public address. When he chose, he could, 
even into his formal utterances, introduce a pointed 
anecdote that would serve to drive home a moral. 

Thus, he told the story of a rural justice who 
was sitting in a case. After having heard testi- 
mony for the plaintiff, the justice ordered court 
adjourned. "Oh, stop, stop, Squire," cried out 
some one, "you're not going?" "Yes," returned 
this local Shallow, "I have heard enough." "But 
you have heard only half the case." "Yes," 
agreed the justice, "but to hear both sides of a 
case always confuses me." 

Again, he told of a boy who had been sent to 



HOUSTON THE MAN 



179 



mill in the days when millers took toll — that is, 
took part of the grain as their pay for doing the 
grinding. The miller of this particular mill had 
the reputation, as the boy knew, of being none too 
honest in taking toll. He got into conversation 
with the boy, and began to question him. 

"What is your father's name?" he asked. "I 
don't know," said the boy. "Well," said the 
miller, "where is he from?" "I don't know," 
answered the boy. "Why," said the miller, "you 
know nothing." "Yes," replied the boy, "some 
things I know and some things I don't know." 
"Well," queried the miller, "what is it you do 
know?" The boy answered, "I do know that 
the miller's hogs are very fat." "And what," 
persisted the miller, "is it that you don't know?" 
And the boy responded, "I do not know whose 
corn fattens them." So, Houston said, he knew 
the senator from Delaware had certain informa- 
tion, but he did not know who had given it. 

On occasion Houston could express himself with 
epigrammatic pungency. A man on whom he 
had bestowed various small State and Federal 
offices turned against him when the secession issue 
was raised, and spoke abusively of him. Some 
one mentioned this to Houston and censured the 



i8o 



SAM HOUSTON 



man for his course. "You musn't be hard on 
him," is said to have been Houston's comment. 
"I was always fond of dogs, and he has all the 
virtues of a dog except his fidelity." It is also 
reported that he remarked of Jefferson Davis, "I 
know Jeff Davis well. He is as ambitious as 
Lucifer and as cold as a lizard." 

Some of his "talks" to the Indians are quite 
remarkable for knowledge of Indian character 
and rather fine in literary style. Here is a speci- 
men, written from Washington, Texas, during his 
second term as president : — 

To the Lipans, in Memory of Flaco, their Chief. 

Executive Department, 
Washington, March 28, 1843. 

My Brother : — 

My heart is sad ! A dark cloud rests upon your 
nation. Grief has sounded in your camp. The 
voice of Flaco is silent. His words are not heard 
in council. The chief is no more. His life has 
fled to the Great Spirit. His eyes are closed. His 
heart no longer leaps at the sight of the buffalo. 
The voices of your camp are no longer heard to 
cry: " Flaco has returned from the chase!" 
Your chiefs look down on the earth and groan in 



HOUSTON THE MAN 181 

trouble. Your warriors weep. The loud voices 
of grief are heard from your women and children. 
The song of birds is silent. The ears of your 
people hear no pleasant sound. Sorrow whispers 
in the winds. The noise of the tempest passes. 
It is not heard. Your hearts are heavy. 

The name of Flaco brought joy to all hearts. 
Joy was on every face. Your people were happy. 
Flaco is no longer seen in the fight. His voice is 
no longer heard in battle. The enemy no longer 
make a path for his glory. His valor is no longer 
a guard for your people. The might of your 
nation is broken. Flaco was a friend to his white 
brothers. They will not forget him. They will 
remember the red warrior. His father will not be 
forgotten. We will be kind to the Lipans. Grass 
shall not grow in the path between us. Let your 
wise men give the council of peace. Let your 
young men walk in the white path. The gray- 
headed men of your nation will teach wisdom. I 
will hold my red brothers by the hand. 

Thy brother, 

Sam Houston. 

It is easy to see how thoroughly Houston has 
caught the Indian mode of thought and the Indian 
style of expression. 



l82 



SAM HOUSTON 



Sometimes, when he wished to be specially em- 
phatic in conversation, he would speak of himself 
in the third person; as, for example, "I have 
come to leave Houston's last words with you," 
or " Houston will take the stump/' and so on. 

He did not know what fear was. His independ- 
ence aroused strong personal dislikes, especially 
among the rougher element; but if conscious of 
the dislike of any one class, he never showed it. 
At the town of Houston, not long after his retire- 
ment, he spoke, in spite of threats, on the war 
between the States, and told his hearers that, cut 
off as it was from the rest of the world, the South 
could not finally escape defeat. When we con- 
sider what popular feeling in Texas then was, we 
must admire the absolute courage of the old leader. 
Though he had been deposed from office and at- 
tacked by his enemies, he walked the streets, we are 
told, as if he had been the real victor in the contest. 

Yet even as he would not, years before, see 
Texas ignored by the United States when she 
offered herself to the Union, so now he would 
not see her coerced when she chose to leave that 
Union. If the Union could be peacefully pre- 
served, well and good; if not, he would remain 
with his State. In this spirit he declined Lin- 



HOUSTON THE MAN 



183 



coin's offer to make him a major-general in the 
Union army. Though personally an ambitious 
man, he then and on many other occasions sacri- 
ficed ambition to principle. 

We know that he gained the confidence of Indian 
tribes; we know how great was his influence in 
the pioneer world of Texas. It is also interest- 
ing to note what an impression he made upon the 
cultured and fastidious Charles Sumner. In a 
letter to John Bigelow (February 3, 1852), Sum- 
ner wrote: "I am won very much by Houston's 
conversation. ... He is really against Slavery ; 
and has no prejudices against Free Soilers. In 
other respects he is candid, liberal and honorable, 
I have been astonished to find myself so much of 
his inclining." 

" General Houston," says Judge John H. Reagan 
in his " Memoirs," "was one of Nature's great 
men — great in intellect, great in action, great in 
his wonderful experiences. A stranger would have 
taken him in any company for a ruler of men." 
So we leave the backwoods boy who became 
"statesman, soldier, orator, 'the liberator of Texas/ 
than whom good Sir Walter himself never drew a 
more fascinating, a more romantic, or a braver, 
figure." 

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